Spring yardwork

Today the kids and I did a bit of yardwork, for the first time this spring. I'm sure the neighbors are relieved! We mostly raked, but did some pruning, too, and it was so exciting to see what survived the winter (mostly everything!) and what might be blooming soon (daffodils.) It was a nice break from the last three days of dress shoes and theology, although the papers yesterday went well. One on Sankta Lucia was especially well-recieved, and the other one, on Tillich's WWI sermons, elicted an odd story from an audience member (warning: NSFW!) His (graduate school?) roommate wrote a dissertation on Tillich's relationship with Some Psychoanalyst Guy, whom the roommate was convinced was a Special Friend. The guy even wrote to Tillich's widow asking whether her late husband had been Special Friends with Some Psychoanalyst Guy, and guy recounting the story to me reported that the response, from Tillich's children was "frosty." Um, yeah... ya think? But there was a good paper on the connections between Blackwater and ultra conservative Christians and Michigan politics and (oddly) University of Chicago economic theorists of various stripes, and the presenter kept teasing me about being a Chicago person, to which I kept replying, "DIVINITY school!" meaning, not an economist, thank you. At the end of the paper I told him that in defense of the UofC, I did have a bumper sticker on my car reading "The real Jesus forgives your Jesus for being a greedy Republican warmonger" which got a huge laugh from the audience. The paper was really, really grim, though, and involved references all sorts of secretly obtained internal Blackwater emails. One audience member joked that this was the last time the paper's author would be seen alive, and he laughed somewhat nervously.

Anyway, back to plants: the beebalm is coming up!


Iris are returning!



The mailbox garden, which involves (if I recall correctly) our first attempt at allium, which are like really tall chives minus the herb bits. Like really tall chive *flowers*. They are in fact related to the whole chive/onion family, but apparently not edible.



Plus, while raking, I found $10. Grace said, "Either we really DO have superpowers or it's just a coincidence!" Finally, cute kid hard at work on some kind of insect-keeping contraption: