Who are these beauties? That's me on the left. This picture was taken in 1973, just before my senior year in college. That's my friend Kathy. We went on this wonderful camping trip to Colorado, staying near Aspen. We drove out in her VW station wagon and had the most fantastic time. We both remember it really clearly. We talked about it a lot last year when we were in Colorado together again. Here we're standing at Independence Pass. Look how thin I am! I found this picture when I cleaned my bedroom over the weekend.



This is a view I've posted before, in early spring. I really like it. I took this yesterday. It's from the road between my house and Lin's. If you turn right at the foot of the hill you're in Swastika, which consists of 3 houses and a crossroad. I don't know the names of the mountains you're looking at. Everything is so lush and green right now, it's really amazing.






This is the Silver Lake Mountain bluffs from yet another angle. You can just barely see Mud Pond in the foreground. It was taken in front of Bill Strong's house (he's dead). There's a famous little sign hanging in front of his house that says "We shoot every fourth visitor--the third one just left!" Everyone knows that sign. The sign's been up as long as I can remember--at least 40 years.






BONEHEAD
This morning our bookmobile driver hit the steel bar on the edge of the garage with the metal plate on the bottom of our new $300,000 bookmobile when he was backing it out. Bent the garage bar and the metal plate on the bkm. His solution? Don't tell Julie, his supervisor, but get out the sledgehammer and start whacking both the garage support and the bookmobile plate. The bookmobile is less than 6 months old and is still under warranty. We don't know how important the beam is to supporting the garage: what is this man thinking of? Someone finally told Julie, but not before the rest of the clerks all knew about it and didn't tell her. I guess it just proves that we don't really need supervisors, do we?

The day is dragging on, but it's noon now. I haven't done much this morning. The 4 consultants had a meeting with the director. She suggested we have it at the coffee cafe rather than in her office (this is our monthly meeting with her, which we have after we have our monthly meeting with each other) so that it would be less formal and in a relaxed atmosphere. It turned out really well, we sat outside and it was more relaxed. Everyone left in the building was, I'm sure, in a tizzy about the fact that the consultants and the director met outside of the building. What were we talking about? Must have been the rest of the staff, huh, and that's why we had to leave the building. No, not at all, but they'll never believe that. We talked about the budget, about grant funding, member libraries, conferences, schedules, being in charge when the director's not here and other stuff.

The sun was out this morning but I heard it's raining not far from Plattsburgh right now. Swell, we can't even have one day without rain! I bought Ken's tomatoes last night and got myself some more annuals. The guy at Lamoy's was really nice and helped me pick out the right kind of tomatoes to get. I really appreciated the help and ended up with a totally different kind that I never would have picked. He said they plant 25,000 of that kind. We'll see what happens this year. Yesterday I ordered a bunch of lilies online because they were on sale cheap. My lilies are definitely dead. I lost a lot of perennials this year--it got too cold with no snow cover. I lost my mountain bluet (centaurea), which was at least 12 years old. It was a nice big plant but there's no sign of it now. My echinachea is also gone and it was coming along really well. I ordered 2 new plants.

My lemon lilies are blooming and they smell wonderful. I'll have pictures of them later. My rose bush has good buds, which is nice. The center part of this huge bush, which I've had nearly 30 years has died and there are huge new canes sticking out all over and sprouting up into the lawn. Last year there were very few blossoms but it looks as if it'll do better this year. I don't know what to do about its unruliness but I suppose I could prune it extensively once it stops blooming. I read recently that early spring is the best time to prune--oops.

Time to eat a peanut butter sandwich and investigate the cataloging backlog. I know I have some old, old local history books from Plattsburgh Public to catalog. Those aren't really so bad to do, and sometimes it feels really cool to handle a book that was published nearly 200 years ago.