Today is my first in-person studio recital since before the pandemic! I booked a pavilion at Tower Grover Park, and I am looking forward to having 22 kids and their families come and play and watch. Hopefully it goes well enough…naturally I’m a bit nervous about the details, and perhaps more so what with worrying about COVID and how it will all work out. The weather looks good: hot, but no rain. I think it’ll be a lot of fun for the students. If it goes well I will likely make this an annual event.

Life has been gradually changing to more “normal.” Last year for my birthday Louie’s mom gave a me a gift card to my choice of two restaurants, The Crossing or Acero. I didn’t want to use it for takeout, so we decided to go Friday night. (It was busy: I made the reservations over a week in advance because the weekend I first wanted was booked up). I highly recommend going to The Crossing for a special occasion dinner. The food and the service was fantastic. It was kind of odd being in a restaurant again, and just sitting and ordering food and eating and such, but it was wonderful. I’m so grateful to all the scientists who developed the COVID vaccine, and grateful to have gotten my vaccine and all of that. It was worth it for that buttery four course dinner. I had goat cheese and beet salad, tagliotelle with trumpet mushrooms, halibut, and fried strawberry pie. They also brought out a baked blue cheese spread with little toasted breads, and regular bread service which was so buttery it resembled a croissant.

Yesterday I taught and played a wedding. I don’t think I have any more weddings on the books right now, believe it or not. I don’t mind though I’m sure a few will pop up over the summer. I’ve been lucky enough to have more than enough teaching to keep me busy, and I’ve got a garden to tend to and other things to do on the weekends.

This was the peas a week ago or so. And now the lettuce on the ground is ready to harvest, in fact we ate a small salad of it yesterday, and the peas are another 6 inches taller and starting to flower.

You can see it is a constant battle in my yard against the weeds. I didn’t know we should be cutting back the raspberry bushes either (I am such a novice gardener!) so they are encroaching: after this summer we’ll prune them way back. And the grass is mostly clover and violets and they keep encroaching. We’ve had so much rain, and this picture was right after days of it, so lush and green! When I was younger I didn’t know cities were so lush and green.

I was really excited about the flowering until I realized that might mean the peas are ready while we are on vacation. We are going to Arkansas for a week right after school is done, and I’m worried we’ll miss the ideal time for peas. Oh well, it can’t be helped, I’m not changing the trip for the peas. Hopefully we won’t miss them all.

Random: awhile back my mom got a bunch of old slides put into digital forms and sorted them into albums. There was an album called “Hannah’s Childhood” and I decided to have it made into a photo book. This is a delightful collection of old photos of me and my family.

The last week of school is coming up, and I’m ready. It’s been a tough year for everybody, kids, parents, teachers, other people, and I think it’ll be a good summer. It often feels like the pandemic is over here. It’s not, but we are so fortunate in this country to have such excellent vaccines widely available! (The pandemic will be over when the performing arts have opened back up normally, and not until then.)

(I didn’t know what it meant at first to have a vaccine be 95 percent effective: at first glance it might seem that means you have a 5 percent chance of catching COVID. But that’s not what it means. Your chance of getting COVID is 95 percent lower with the vaccine, and may be as low at .04 percent chance of getting it.)

(I should probably stop with the parentheses.)