Bromeliads

It was past time to switch out some of my bromeliads - several of the ones inside needed to go outside again. I took several pictures of a couple of my favorites.

This one is my all time favorite bromeliad. It is a Billbergia 'Hallelujah'. The mottled cream spots on glossy dark green leaves which can be tinged with pink give an idea of why it got its name! I got this as a bare root little cutting from Tropiflora a few years ago and it has pupped regularly since. As if the leaf coloration isn't spectacular enough, this ridiculously wonderful inflorescence in red, white, & blue comes popping out. It first shows a red sheath and then there is this amazing and patriotic display for a few days.

This cryptanthus is Fosterianus 'Elaine'. I love the markings and coloration on the leaves. There are 5 or 6 pups in this 8" pot.

Labor Day

After consulting with Meg Givens -- Gayle's friend from church, fellow Bible study-er, and our eye on decorating -- we did a little more painting in the great room and rearranged the furniture. The idea was to draw the eyes toward the kitchen with the color up high on the wall of the great room, so we added the mineral red to the wall above the front door and the end of the kitchen bulkhead. We think it works! And it only took me a couple of hours.

Gayle is working on a tee shirt quilt for a TCS eighth grader. His mom works in the school office and saw the tee shirt quilt Gayle made for the TCS office manager's daughter. Gayle does a really neat thing with the proceeds from these quilts. The moms give her the tee shirts that are special memories for their kids, pay for the fabric, and then make a donation to Food for Children. The quilts have a flannel back and will probably be used as cuddle quilts.

We're running some errands this afternoon, and there are some bushes that need to be trimmed again. I may even fire up the new power washer; parts of the sidewalk are getting green. The bike needs to be washed and I have a set of papers to grade. We're barbequing some ribs for supper. Hope the afternoon rains cooperate!

End of the Week

Our second full week of school was one of those "long-short" weeks -- it went by quickly and had a lot packed into it. Gayle and I are on a new committee, the mentoring committee, at TCS. We helped in the formation of this committee over the summer and now Gayle is mentoring a brand new kindergarten teacher and I am the facilitator for the four mentors and their mentees. We had a brief meeting on Thursday before school just to see how things were going. Time is always a problem; the first days of school seem to have lots of changes in the schedule. We are finding that our mentoring document will need some tweaking -- reality has a way of doing that! My fifth graders were in charge of chapel on Friday, so we had to find time this week to practice. The focus this year is on the names of Jesus, so our chapel looked at many different names that we use during the week and then we came to the very best name, Jesus. I used some of the New Mexico pictures I had taken a couple of summers ago in a PowerPoint presentation I put together for a recital of Psalm 8 that the class did at the end of our chapel. I also had a spectacular picture of the Eagle Nebula taken by the Hubble telescope. That didn't hurt either! Gayle had a birthday party for one of her third graders on Friday. The kids got a little goofy with the frosting, but then it was the end of the day.

This is the tall and the short of things in third grade!

We took a trip to De Leon Springs State Park on the motorcycle this morning. We left the house at 7 AM and were home again before noon. It was a round trip of about 110 miles. We met Vern and Linda Stauffer, & their daughter Monica at the park for breakfast. Inside the park is a restaurant, The Old Spanish Sugarmill. They have griddles built into the tables and we cooked our own pancakes and eggs. They do the bacon/sausage in the kitchen; everything else is right at the table. Gayle got blueberries for her pancakes and thought that one pancake reminded her of one of Bob's watercolors. We did take a couple of stops on the way back; it's a long sit and we needed to

stretch. We did get back before the afternoon thunderstorms hit. We've been in a more normal
cycle of morning sunshine and afternoon rain the last couple of days after almost four weeks of hot
and mostly dry weather. It made my commute to school on the bike a dry run in the afternoons, but we do need the rain. Next week we should be at 40 to 50% probabilities for rain so I may just get wet...or I'll ride with Gayle. That's the joy of teaching at the same place! I'm getting about 40 MPG, and the 5.5 miles to school is just a fun ride. I find myself reciting Psalms and songs of praise as I ride to school.