The sun has returned and we are all busy as bees this week, the closing week of school for Emma & Kate. There are Track & Field Days and Rootbeer Float Parties, Field Trips, yearbook signings, and stacks of papers coming home in their backpacks each day. Whew! I'm struggling to keep in step with it all.
This morning Kate forget a bag of popcorn she wanted to take to school for "Movie Morning." She called home tearful, begging for me to bring it and I told her I'd try but I was trying to get a little work done for a client this morning. But after hanging up I decided to be a good mom and I raced out to the school, corn in tow.
The school is bustling and there's a hum of excitement – just one day until Summer Vacation! You can feel the electricity in the air. All that pent up childhood energy, forced into desks for nine months is about to bust into the warm air and grassy hillsides.
I was glad I had my camera with me. I stopped to snap a few pics of the school and the views that the children enjoy as they swing and run on the playground. They don't know how lucky they are to have views like this every day.
It's a beautiful time of year in Montana. The green of the low areas screaming Summer while the mountains are still just coming into Spring. When it rains in the valley, the evergreens in the mountains receive fresh blankets of light, Spring snow. The contrast is breathtaking.
As I drove home I heard a bit on NPR about a new exhibit at the New York Botanical Gardens. They have recreated Monet's horticultural work for an exhibit that includes photographs, videos, rare documents and two of the impressionist's paintings. The exhibit is meant to show visitors how Monet's love of gardening served as a huge inspiration for his work as an artist.
You enter by stepping through a facade of Monet's house, with
its salmon walls and green shutters, and out into a long corridor of
flowers. All of the flowers, more than 150
species, will change as the exhibit runs through three seasons, now through late October. They've all been grown from seed by the conservatory's
gardening team.
You can read about it and see photos from the exhibit here. (Whoa - those delphiniums and the water lilies, and little old man Monet - adorable - painting on those really large canvases!)
Doesn't that sound DREAMY! I so wish I could see this in person (if not the real place in Giverny, France). *big sigh*
Wow, those photos are beautiful - where you live is really scenic. Such dramatic mountains, you are lucky.
ReplyDeleteids don't break up for summer here until the last week of July then they have 6 weeks off before going back in the first week of September. Do American schools always have such a long summer holiday? What does everyone do??
We have about 12 weeks or so of summer. Usually my girls do a week-long overnight camp and maybe another day camp for a week, then we take a family trip or two. It's usually a lot of hanging out, reading, swimming, playing, and yes, even some boredom. :) I think families where both parents work outside the home find summers challenging. They have to fill each week with supervision and camps. I'm sure it's quite a drain on the pocketbook too!
DeleteThanks for the beautiful pictures of "big sky country", I love Montana and miss it. I love our Pacific Northwest beauty but sometimes I miss seeing the grand expanse of open fields and sky. You have some really great thunderstorms too.
ReplyDeleteI love Monet as well-serene, calming, yet energizing. I would love to have watched him work.
Hope you have a great summer-I remember looking forward to the change each summer and then again when school started in the fall :)
Thanks Rebecca. I am always sooo ready for summer vacation and then sooo ready for the school year to begin so we can have some structure back.
DeleteI used to live in the Seattle/Olympic Peninsula areas and the beauty there is so wonderful too - so GREEN! But when we go back now I do notice the more closed in feel. Still, I love the PNW.