Celebrating the Fourth

We have been busy spending more time with family this past week, culminating in a day of 4 of 6 Brodericks together for the first time in about 35 years. Wild! Family photo overload alert!

My youngest sister and her husband have been travelling through Europe and the U.K. on motorcycles since Oct last year, and my eldest brother flew in from Florida to be part of the rare reunion opportunity this presented. 

It grew from 2 sibs from last week to 3,

Photo: ML Broderick

and then 4 on July Fourth, a day for celebrating on this side of the pond

Photo: D.Schultz

We were 7 in all with the 'Partners-Support Group' joining in the festivities

Photo: D. Schultz

There was much reminiscing, teasing and laughing in between all the eating, drinking and photographing. So many family pics were taken that not much sightseeing was done, and many jaws were aching. It was the best 4th ever!

Our celebratory cake, soaked with brandied berry juice, and served with berries, whipped cream AND ice cream!

One more for the road

Photo: D.Schultz

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” 

 - Epicurus 

Road Works

 

A road works bonus:

A chance to pause and enjoy

Stone barn and farmyard

Citizen Science 4 Us

Dale and I took part in the Severn Rivers Trust volunteer workshop last week, where we were shown how to ID and sort indicator faunal species in the River Cain. During this session, we realized we had been saying the river's name incorrectly - Cain is pronounced 'Kine' in Welsh. (We asked about our town name too, and learned that we'd been saying it wrong. One of the knowledgeable volunteers has written many historical picture books about our town and was able to help us get it right. We'd been putting the emphasis in the wrong place too: Llanfyllin is pronounced more like LanVahlin.).

We were each given a tray in which to float the samples collected (all of which had been preserved in alcohol), a pair of tweezers, a microscope and a key to follow. We checked each invertebrate under the microscope and sorted it into the correct category to be counted.

There was also a presentation about more esoteric features to look for in identifying species.

The samples are only taken twice each year, so the commitment from the volunteers isn't a big burden.

Ooh, I had so much fun learning new things and meeting friendly, curious and knowledgeable people. Though the task became tedious after a few hours, we definitely look forward to returning for the fall counting session.

Catching Up

A lot of rearranging and cleaning has been going on in the background (as well as some baking!) alongside sleeping at my computer, doing regular chores like laundry and shopping, and transforming our patio.

I was disappointed to find that my baking sheets and pizza pan we brought across in our container are too big to be used in my oven! Is that an excuse for me not to have to make Dale's favorite Brazilian flan? (Flan, I said flan, Brazilian FLAN..). It needs to be cooked in a bain-marie, which is a bit of a nuisance to manage, but heck, the microwave we bought is convection also, and is larger than my oven, so I'm not yet off the hook because it will probably fit in there. Or time to scale our portions down from American sizing?

Whilst doing some cleaning, I came across this lovely find in our coat closet. This cellar spider (daddy-long-legs) is raising the next generation of pest controllers, so I'll leave her be.

Dale managed to get our 80 year old neighbour to do some mowing for us! Scheming Dale was 'showing him how light, easy and efficient the battery mower can be'. I think he was taken advantage of! This same gentleman (retired lawyer) said he likes Dale because he's a non-conformist, and not a conventional rule-follower. The British seem to like to 'keep to themselves' he says, and he prefers our willingness to be open and get to know all neighbors.

Photo: D. Schultz

In the meanwhile, our Maine paradise sits and waits to be lived in. Our good friends have been mowing our lawn for us all this time - what a gift! We've now reduced the price down to 749K, which seems to be more on par with what other neighborhood homes have to offer, and we have had a few more viewings. Fingers crossed it will be loved again soon ...