Summer officially began for Ellie and Owen on June 8th! Lela had already gotten out on June 3rd, so on the 8th our summer officially began! Our summer had an unusual rhythm in 2021. Frequently, we have a week or two of unscheduled time at the beginning for the kids to relax and start to recover from school, before any camps or travel start. But this summer had strange pacing, with two camps right up front, just six days after Ellie and Owen got out of school. The summer was a strange one due to the pandemic. Most camps and programs had shut down entirely, as they’d been unable to make the jump to the online format. Only a few – maybe 10%? – had successfully transitioned into an online format. Then, in turn, those few remaining camps were absolutely SLAMMED with applicants. We got letters about “unprecedented demand” and I could see why – most kids were at home, unable to travel or do their normal activities, so far more of them were applying to these camps than usual. My impression was a 500% increase in numbers of applicants. The result was that it was extremely difficult for kids to get in to programs, so we grabbed at straws a lot that summer. So we pieced together a couple camps that we were able to get the kids into: Owen went to a French-and-drawing camp organized by his French tutor, which was in-person and outdoors in a local park. Ellie got into a flute camp when another student backed out and Ellie’s teacher contacted us to ask if Ellie would like the slot. Lela signed up for a remote neurobiology course, and got into a set of summer lectures in geology through the Stanford Earth Young Investigators program. So our summer started out with six relaxed, unshcheduled days, followed a week-long camp for Ellie (flute camp, on Zoom), and for Owen (French and Drawing camp, in person at a local park). During these six unscheduled days we had several notable events. The first was that the mom of Owen’s friend, Jake, had surgery (on the last day of school). So I took care of her two sons, Jake and his brother, Luke, multiple times over the next couple days as their dad visited her in the hospital. Owen loved having Jake over, especially as Jake had not come back to school in person. I also cooked them a bunch of dinners, which I sent over in several grocery bags: several types of soup as well as ragu Bolognese (frozen, in dinner-sized portions), pasta for the first night, fresh-baked bread, ice cream. They could store the soups in their freezer and use them as needed. I was very glad to be able to help them as they went through a tough time. I started making dinners like this about eighteen years ago when my nephew, Chris, broke his jaw. I made lots of pureed soups for him as he spent about six weeks with his jaw wired shut, and only able to eat with a straw inserted behind his molars. Then I froze them into single portion bags and drove them up to Sacramento. I think there were almost thirty portions, of four or five different types of soup. Chris and my niece, Allison, still talk about those soups and how much he loved them, and how they were the best thing he ate during his convalescence. With that experience I realized how helpful it could be to provide LOTS of meals, which could be frozen and used whenever they were needed. This is separate from, or in addition to, providing single, hot meals designed to be eaten the same evening. I’ve done lots of both types of meals over the subsequent years, but I do like the frozen-in-portions format, which gives the receiving family more flexibility to draw on these dishes when they really need them, or to use them to supplement meals they make themselves. On June 10th, the girls got their second shot! So now they, too, were on their way to full vaccination immunity. This was a big relief. We were waiting anxiously for word about when Owen might get vaccinated – the news on that was quite vague. We hoped that he’d get his shots before the end of the summer so we could travel afterwards, but that looked increasingly unlikely as we got into the summer. Ultimately, we realized that he would probably not have his shots by the time school started up again, so we chose a very safe domestic destination – Massachusetts, which had excellent vaccination rates and social distancing protocols – and planned a two-week trip there at the tail end of the summer. On June 11th, my friend Cheryl visited from Oregon and came over to our place for dinner. Cheryl is a friend I met at the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory back in 2004-2005. She and her husband and daughter had moved to Oregon during the summer of 2019, just before the pandemic. She’d got a job at Fish and Wildlife in Oregon, so they’d moved out of the highly urbanized South Bay and up into a small town on the Oregon coast, where they’d bought a house on a beautifully forested property. It was lovely to get caught up and hear about their new lives up in Oregon – they have motion-sensitive security cameras on their property and check them every day, and most recently they’d caught a mountain lion on camera! They love the slower pace of life up there and being so close to the wilderness. That weekend we visited a local art fair, then had a nice family lunch out at Cascal, a Spanish tapas place in downtown Mountain View, on their outdoor patio – one of our first non-takeout meals out in our area since the pandemic. Then Ellie had her annual end-of-year flute recital on Zoom on Sunday evening! She’s doing a great job. The following week, June 14-18, is when things got really busy. Owen attended an all-day summer camp in French, drawing, and coding in a local park. This camp was organized by Marion, our French tutor, at a local park. Lela was recruited to be a camp counselor. Marion taught the kids the basics of French with her daughter and Lela, and she had recruited high school students to teach additional subjects, so she had Abby Berwick teach drawing and another high school student (whom I didn’t know) teach some programming. They played games, had snacks, learned about the French language, drew, coded on laptops, and had a good time. Jake went to this camp too, and Owen had a great time. Owen and Jake had already done informal weekly backyard lessons with Marion and her daughter during the pandemic, so Owen and Jake were quite familiar with the context. They had a good time. Lela, as a counselor, spent all day there helping out with the kids and with French. It was a good experience for both of them. For the following school year, we’ve signed Owen up for more academic lessons with Marion that would get him started on learning French in a more rigorous way, and Jake is taking those lessons with him. During this same week, Ellie attended the flute camp on Zoom. This was the “C’est Bon” Chamber Music Academy camp. This was an all-day camp that involved lessons, followed by one-on-one tutoring and workshops. She had to play a difficult piece of music and submit a recording of it mid-week so that her duet partner could practice with it. The duet partner did the same. Then, in Ellie’s camp lessons, tutoring sessions, and workshops, a flute teacher would critique her technique and provide feedback. It was a high caliber camp, very intense, and Ellie learned a great deal. She also found it quite stressful, especially coming at the very beginning of summer like this. This camp also provided a peek into the world of very driven young musicians. Ellie loves playing the flute, and she plays very well, but this was much more intense than any music experience she had had so far. On the whole she learned a great deal, which was good, but the stress level was a bummer. The following school year she got into Advanced Band at school and got the position of first flute (leading the flute section) which she loves and is super proud of (I’m writing this in February 2022), so I think that the Advanced Band experience is suiting her better than the camp did. Nevertheless, she managed, learned a lot, and did a great job on the Zoom recital on the last day of camp. Lela, for her part, finished up her year of dance lessons with a small, in-studio recital. Normally her dance school does a big show at a local university theater, but that was impossible with the pandemic. So we attended Lela’s end-of-year dance at the studio and enjoyed it very much. At the end of this week, the girls had a number of social events: Ellie went to Vibha’s, and Lela had her friends Manya and Roxy over. They baked an octopus bundt cake and decorated it (I helped with the glaze), and they watched a movie on the patio. Meanwhile Ellie, Owen, and I watched a movie on the TV in the master bedroom. (Mike helped me troubleshoot this setup over the phone, as he was already in Wisconsin by this time). Mike flew to Wisconsin to attend the wedding of his nephew, Ian, Scott’s oldest child, to his fiancée, Marie. He went a couple days early so he could attend the rehearsal dinner, then spent a few days visiting at his Dad and Jean’s farm, then flew back with his Dad so he could visit us. His Dad, now 80 and with early Parkinson’s, was no longer comfortable flying alone. I will cover the wedding and Grandpa Mark’s visit on the following pages. In other news, the landscapers made great progress on the putting-green-to-lawn project! They’d ripped up the putting green substrate earlier, and laid the irrigation, then this week they added a layer of dirt. Then the sod arrived. I’m always bemused the sod – rolls of living green carpet which get unrolled and laid out over the area to be covered. We’d consulted with Rigo about what kind to get and went with his top recommendation: a shade-sun blend that was tough enough to withstand kids playing on it. So they unrolled the grass and FINALLY we had something ALIVE down there. In many ways I felt that the putting green of fake grass was an extension of the concrete circle down there, another non-living surface. So having something alive down there felt much, much better. It also changed the microclimate down there: it immediately felt much cooler. Our goal is to have a lawn down there while the kids are still home, as a living substrate that they can play on. Once the kids are gone we will likely convert it into something else, like raised beds or a shade garden with paths and flowerbeds. Basically, something that will reflect our needs as empty nesters. We’re also mindful of perhaps making another small-child area, if there are grandchildren, like a sensory garden or lots of places for little kids to play. But that’s all in the future. Once the sod was rolled out the next stage could happen: laying the flat stones. We wanted a little ‘patio’ at one end, with flat stones with grass between them, which would provide a solid surface under the hanging ‘egg’ chair. This would keep the grass from getting beat up beneath it. Then the landscapers dug a hole for the metal post that would hold the egg chair up and poured the concrete. They would bolt the post into the concrete, which would make it easier to remove in the future if we wished. So things were coming along beautifully! Mike and I also did more work in the garden. Mike’s tomatoes and zucchini were thriving. This was very promising after several summers of indifferent tomato harvests at the old place. And this is the first time we were successful at zucchini! For my part, I did more pots, over in the sun garden area, and I was delighted to see that the crepe myrtle in the giant pot was putting out new growth. The previous owners had thought it was dead, but it wasn’t. I’d read up on how to trim it and had cut it back fiercely earlier in the year, and was glad to see new leaves appearing! The little baby hops plants were also doing great, racing up the trellises at a crazy pace of what seemed like several inches per day. I trained them up so that we’d get good coverage of the back fence.