The cool night temps are causing spring flowers to last. What a year for lilacs!

The only annuals at this point (good thing as I had to bring the pot inside at night this week), a gift from the church for teaching faith formation this past AY.

I can't resist taking pictures of the lilac bush, they are usually such fleeting flowers.

Since 2009, I have been responsible for cutting the grass inside the fence. I took it over when Bob was sick, and although he could have resumed doing it in 2011, I discovered that I love weed whacking (my method of choice). But for years, we have had "a guy" mow the lawn outside of the fence. He did a marvelous job with that, yard clean up (this does not mean "poop patrol," which has always been my duty, but leaves) and other small landscaping projects.

Early this spring, he called to tell me good news for him, but bad news for us: he got a better job, and so is giving up his landscape business! He is nearly impossible to replace, and the grass will soon be up to my knees. My little weed whacker is not up to the task -- the charge doesn't last long enough even with two batteries, and it is hardly heavy duty. So, Bob bought another battery operated weed whacker -- a major Ryobi. I hope I like it as much as my trusty Black & Decker.

Added: I love his column.

Soon I will be able to add to those annuals -- I am 80-100 percent done with evaluations for my spring classes, and the deadline isn't until Tuesday night!

One point of aggravation, nothing to do with spring classes: The bookstore informed me that the book I created (the publisher pitched me to do this, basically it's compiling a reader of various articles, like a course pack but in a nice POD print book and ebook format) isn't in stock yet!! I was told to have it ready by the end of March if I wanted it available for summer session, and I held up my end of the deal. 

This is a problem, as I want the reading done by the first FTF class -- and I am afraid students will discover it isn't in stock, and just plan on buying it when they come to campus that day.

I don't have time to go to campus to put a copy on reserve so students would have (inconvenient) access, and the job of scanning each page individually from the glass was daunting. So, I grabbed my scissors, cut the first reading out of one of the print proofs they sent me so I could use the feeder, and scanned it into PDF.