August has been a very busy month…now I am into teaching two more composition classes. A different kind of busy. This summer was dedicated to gardening and to restoring the Carnegie building in town. As a result of carrying heavy water buckets from my rain barrel and also lifting heavy boxes of old documents at the Carnegie, I have suffered a rotator cuff problem in my right shoulder. No fun for sure.
Sunset on the prairie
I am glad for the good gardens we have and thankful for the produce that we have to harvest. We have had an abundance of snow peas, yellow beans, tomatoes, potatoes, beets, carrots, cukes and much more! We have LOTS of grapes I need to process and also many, many plums. They are small but maybe I’ll make the latter into jam. Oh my, that is more work but at least not heavy lifting.
Then there is the Carnegie that after four days of constant visitors to see the photographer’s framed pictures of outside scenes and also watercolor painters, we brought in over $3,000 of fundraiser monies. For that we are thankful and hope to do more work on the lower level floor. Part of having shoulder problems was staining, varnishing, sanding and varnishing again the wainscoting that went in the former children’s library. Yes, I had to work quickly because three days later we opened up the Carnegie building to the public.
Our best day was showing off the Boubin paintings that people own in the community on Saturday. There must have been at 40-45 paintings, big and small that showed up.
I should get back to preparing for next week’s lessons. I have 35 students and they are all great students. Some are international students mostly from China but from other countries as well.
