Happy Eliza Doolittle Day!

Your assignment today is to go watch "My Fair Lady" with Audrey Hepburn. In her song, "Just You Wait 'enry 'iggins" she sings about going to "St. James so often that I'll call it "St. Jim."" And in visiting with the king on one of her many social calls, the king will tell her, "Eliza, old thing, I want all of England your praises to sing. Next week, on the 20th of May, I proclaim Eliza Doolittle Day!" So go watch the show, sing the songs, and enjoy the blustery Eliza Doolittle 20th of May Day we've had today.

We're getting ready for graduation and the end of school here. The kids have 1.5 days left of their year, and Justin is preparing his annual and final graduation speech to give at his former school. Every year he gives a speech that individually honors each graduate with a poem, final reading assignment, or other personal bit that both tells something about the student and celebrates what each has contributed to the senior class. Before you gasp about the numbers of students, the highest number of graduates in a class has been around 20. This year he will be writing about 11 students. Since it's the last one he'll do, it's going to be a tender, bittersweet experience.

My mom came down to help me get my yard and house under control yesterday. We got a lot accomplished. We planted marigolds and petunias (including my lovely Mother's Day petunia I got from the ward...had to go buy some friends in the same color to go with it! Darn.) and made tremendous progress on the room we call The Library, but which is really the catch-all for everything in the house that I haven't figured out where to put. My mother is great for helping me part with things I don't need, but that I have attached sentimental value to ... and really should part with anyway. And as a post script to our activities yesterday, I managed to get my tomatoes, peppers, and lone cabbage planted in one of my snazzy new boxes tonight before tomorrow's chilly, wet weather comes. We're certainly getting buffeted now. I hope my little starts hang in there. And maybe tomorrow, if it's not pouring and freezing cold (I'll admit it ... I can't stand gardening in uncomfortable -- too hot/cold/wet/windy/something -- weather), I'll even get my new strawberry starts going in another box. They're currently chillin' in a grocery bag in my fridge. Sorry about the bad pun. Oh, and the onion sets I bought. They're keeping the strawberry starts company.