Free at Last

Yesterday was our last day of work until mid-August. Woo hoo! And it was barely a workday. I had almost no customers in the library, and everything was pretty much already cleaned up and put away for the summer, so I just did a few small tasks here and there.

I took Jerry, the library Christmas cactus, down to the Lower School patio garden and hosed him off to ease his mealybug infestation. (A fifth-grader named Jerry last year when she saw me daubing his leaves with alcohol to kill the mealybugs. She decided he needed a name. I have no idea why she chose that one, but whatever.) I did the same with another Christmas cactus that I then brought home to try to rehabilitate. It needs some work.

I discovered this dinosaur fantasy (above) in a pool or fountain in the middle of the courtyard.

And these fearsome monsters were off to the side.

We had our year-end lunch at noon, where we heard speeches and said goodbye to several departing colleagues, and then we were free!

Someone left these flowers outside the office door of a co-worker. Unfortunately I think she'd already gone home, so I e-mailed her to tell her they were there and I put them in some water. Hopefully she'll come back for them.

I walked home and found these nicely framed prints along the way, offered up for the taking. They need a cleaning but they look good otherwise. Rothko, I think? Or maybe a Rothko imitator? In any case I did not take them.

In the afternoon I lay in the garden with Olga and read. I got very sleepy, which I attribute to the two glasses of wine I had at lunch. It's certainly not the fault of the book, Jennifer Egan's "A Visit From the Goon Squad," which I love. An English teacher recommended it to me and I'm so glad she did. It's a novel made up of interconnected stories about people loosely arranged around a music producer, and I think both the construction and language use are interesting.

Last night we were supposed to get "torrential" rains, according to the weather forecast. We got rain but it was hardly torrential, at least as far as I could tell before I fell asleep. Nothing like the toad-stranglers I've witnessed in Florida!