Did I scare you off?  I guess you’ll miss all the excitement yet to come!  Your loss!

I started preps for my first surgery yesterday–three different eye drops, three times a day, for seven days (pre- and post-).

It was nice out, and in the evening it rained, no doubt because I watered!  I wanted to get the garden prepped for my absence.  I also repotted the cactuses.  All my native tree seedlings are rooting well, for planting “the forest”!

Flowers are blooming, reblooming, and about to bloom.  It will be very flowery when I get back from recovery.  I noticed there are lots of pipevine caterpillars on the Dutchman’s pipe vines.  They will become beautiful blue-black swallowtail butterflies with orange/red spots.

Today is the first day of school.  Yesterday Stacey and SQ practice-walked the route from Hixson MS to Avdi’s, since he’ll be doing that every day.  It went without a hitch.

It was very quiet, with that impending feeling of the unknown school year ahead.  A year of firsts: Y starting HS, SQ starting MS, and K/S graduating next year.  E/N practiced driving with Avdi, and is predictably on top of it.  (Just N from now on.)  The two oldest kids want to move to Europe/Scandinavia as soon as they can.

Hopefully this will be a year of good changes for all of us.