Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

This is one of our garden gnomes. 

We have lots of bleeding hearts (dicentra spectabills) in our yard.  Every few years I dig them up, divide them and start more plantings.  My neighbor admired them so much that I gave her several plants for her yard.
These are coral bells (heuchera micrantha).   I also divide these and plant them here and there.
This is a lily of the valley (convallaria majalis).  Over the years, I have not had much luck with them.  Finally I have a few plants that are starting to survive.
Hosta is another plant that thrives in our yard.  I have to divide these every few years, too.

Some dogs have all the fun

Historic Sugartown Days had dog agility demonstrations. 

This 9 month old Corgi is just learning the course.  He was more concerned with keeping by the heels of his owner rather than doing the jumps and such.

These dogs know the course well.

This poor guy was left behind in the car.  I don't know why people would do this.  They just paid $5.00 to park their car and will probably be enjoying the event for an hour or so.  There were other dogs there enjoying the festivities so why couldn't this little guy?

Smell smoke?

Historic Sugartown Days took place on Friday, April 25 until 10 p.m. and then on Saturday, April 26 from 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.  Sometime after the close of festivities Friday night, a fire consumed an old barn and these two vehicles right next door to the Sharpless Worrall House and General Store.  On Saturday, they had the area roped off with yellow caution tape but you could still smell the smoke.  Luckily the fire was contained to this area and did not catch any of the historic homes or other historic buildings on fire.  It was also contained enough that the event went on as planned Saturday.

Love is a many-splendored thing . . .

While at the Sugartown Historic Days event, we saw a tandem bike and were intrigued because it had a GPS unit attached in front of the second seat.  Later we ran into the man as he was walking the bike over to where his wife was.  We talked as we walked.  When I asked if I could take his picture he said to wait until he rejoined his wife so she could be in the photo, too.  (Isn't that sweet?)

During our conversation, we learned that he bikes a lot.  He could easily rack of 3000 miles a year on his own bike.  Together they rack up about 1000 miles a year on their tandem.  (I think the best Bob and I did was 100 miles one summer.)  They are heading to NYC next weekend to ride in the Commerce Bank Five Boro Bike Tour.

But what I found so special about this couple is that the reason they ride a tandem bike is because the wife now has MS and can no longer ride her own bike.  Now, if that ain't love, I don't know what love is.  We should all have a love that special in our lives.

Sew what.

This is the illusive zipperfoot.  I wasn't able to find the zipperfoot for my machine at home so I had to use the school's machine for the first few steps of my pattern.

The first thing I had to sew, using a zipperfoot, was all the piping for the bodice of my dress.

Kids day at work

Yesterday was take your kids to work day.  The group I work with teaches Six Sigma.  As I am the coordinator for my group's offerings, I was stuck there for the duration.  Therefore, the only pics I have are from my group's presentations.

Here is one of the administrative assistants in the building trying out a Statapult.  It's some kind of statistical catapult.  Don't ask me to explain it, the guy in the photo, however, is an expert in these matters.

This is what the kids are aiming at.  The goal is to knock the ogre from the castle and save the villagers.  It's lame but it works.  I brought a different Shrek ogre in for this year but the person running the activity liked this one better because it didn't fall over as easy as the other one which meant he didn't have to reset it as often.

We have several Statapults that are free standing and the kids get to position and aim them to try and knock out the ogre.  Then we have one Super Statapult and is designed and set up to always hit the target with a one-touch release mechanism.  The aim of Six Sigma is to reduce your defects so you continually produce a defective-free product.

The other activity we ran is a statistical activity involving M&Ms.  This is a big draw, too.  First you get to pick plain or peanut M&Ms.  We decided that next year we're going to ask the kids why they chose the one that they did.  More kids went for plain than for peanut.  One girl said that the plain ones were less crunchy.  One person said that he chose the plain because he is allergic to almonds and the peanut and almond M&Ms are produced in the same building.  Therefore, if he were to eat a peanut M&M he would have an allergic reaction.

So, first you sort your M&Ms by color and count them.  Then you plot your numbers into a spreadsheet table already set up on the computer.  The formula will then tell you if you have an average bag of M&Ms or a defective bag of M&Ms.  We did have a few defective bags.  One girl had a bag that was mostly blue M&Ms.  Even though it was considered to be a defective bag, she still wanted to eat them.

We also raffle off a maglite flashlight.  Not every kid who comes to our activities fills out a raffle form.  Yesterday we had 149 kids fill out forms.  Supposedly there were 600 kids registered to attend the event at my office campus.

It was a long day - noisy and hectic.  It's always so nice and quiet when they all go home.  

This is a classroom

Of all my years in college, this is the oddest classroom and classroom layout I have ever come across.  Every Wednesday for the last 14 weeks I have come to this classroom to discuss film and literature as mythology.  The first thing everyone discusses every week is how weird the room is and how uncomfortable they are with the set up.  If you come late and all the seats at the tables are full you have to sit along the wall.

This week we watched an excerpt from an old cult movie that I would highly recommend when you're in the mood to watch a really bad movie.  It's so bad that it's laughable.  It stars Arnold Strong.  Ever heard of him?  That's Arnold Schwarzenegger when he first came to America.  The film is called Hercules in New York and it was shot in 1969.  Arnold is in serious need of a drama coach and a diction coach!  I don't think it's available on DVD only on VHS.   

"Go on, ya Pansy!"

These pansies are from the pot on our front steps.  I just love playing with my macro lens.

Got milk?

This is a rare sight for me. The last time I had this many cookies in my house was over ten years ago when I was a G.S. leader and cookie mom for my daughter's troop. Ah . . . those were the days . . .

Pin, then sew

Over the weekend I started working on my costume for my design class.  The top and bottom shots are what will be button loops when I'm done.  They need to be sewn, turned inside out and then each strip cut into 4 pieces of equal length.  The middle shot is piping that needs to be sewn then attached to the bodice of the dress.