The side of our house - Vegetable garden in side yard

Back left side of yard - Back left corner of yard

Left side of yard is hosta heaven - Roses on trellis

Perennial garden in right side of backyard

More pictures are also available over at Flickr. If you’re so inclined, you can also watch the 3-minute tour of our yard below. It’s not super-exciting, but should place a lot of the above photos in context.

The Yard from librarygrrrl on Vimeo.

We again entered in the D division, played two of the same teams, and had different results from last year.

Game one was against the ever-strong Rhode Island Raptors. I’m not sure why they entered the tournament in this division, since they are in the C division in both the Walpole league and the South Shore league. At any rate, they were our first challenge. And a challenge it was! The game was at 8 a.m. on Saturday - not a good time for most of us on the team. Ugh. They beat us 1-5. They scored three in the first and two in the second, which meant that we actually tied them in the third period. Guess we were all waking up!

Game two was later that day against the Cape Cod Women’s Hockey League team. We played a lot better against them; they also weren’t as strong a team as R.I. We ended up winning that game 2-1.

Later that evening we watched our friend Steph’s team play against the Quincy Fighting Squirrels. We were not disappointed at seeing some action - holy bad blood between those teams! The refs tried to wrest control of the game in the third period, but by then it was too late. Needless to say, there were some fireworks on the ice as poor Steph’s team couldn’t put the puck in the net to save their lives.

At the civilized hour of 11 a.m. on Sunday we played our third game against the Ice Breakers. If we won we’d be in the championship game against R.I., and if we lost we’d be out. Well, we couldn’t have lost if we had tried. We spent about 90% of the game in their end of the ice and we ended up winning 4-0.

So that put us in the position of having to a.) stick around until Cape traffic was really bad and b.) play Rhode Island again. Fortunately on both counts, neither were horrible! (Seriously - the traffic coming home from the Cape [mind you, we started at the Bourne Bridge so we missed the traffic ON the Cape] was rather light! That never happens.)

But the game against the Raptors was a ton of fun. Why, you ask, since they’d spanked us hard the morning before? Well, our de facto coach-of-the-day Bridget (bless her!) watched the Raptors play a couple of games and figured out how to frustrate them. She took about 15 minutes before the game explaining the two systems she wanted us to run during the game. In our offensive end no one went in deep after the puck. Instead, our wings simply stuck on their wings and didn’t let them get any breakout passes. Our centers picked up all their errant passes and ooooh they didn’t like that. In our defensive zone we simply ran a box defense and didn’t let them get into the middle of the ice. While we didn’t run it perfectly by any stretch of the imagination, we ran both of the systems well enough to TOTALLY piss them off. They got frustrated and annoyed. I poke-checked their two strongest players on at least 2 rushes each. What a change from the earlier game when I wanted to douse myself in orange paint and call myself a traffic cone! Amy drew a couple of penalties - the best was against a player who had been really physical with her all game. She finally cross-checked Amy into the boards (I think it was a cross-check - at least that’s what it looked like from my vantage point 20 feet away) and was immediately whistled to the box. We didn’t capitalize on it, but we held them to a 0-3 score. And against them, that was a victory!

So we ended the weekend with a 2-2 record, and a second-place finish overall. It was a lot of fun, and a nice way to end our tournament season. Now all we have to look forward to this summer are league games twice a week and the 3-day camp up at Dartmouth. The horrors of that little hockey in the summer!!! (I jest, I jest….)

Raising Kane is my Tues/Wed team. Last week we played the Pumas in a tough game. We ended up losing 1-2 (although I also saw 1-3. Hmmm….) The things I remember about the game:

• The Pumas are a FAST team and got several odd-man rushes on us.
• Playing defense with Lynn is fun, even if we want to put “Thank You Joni!” on the back of our jerseys for our goalie to see.
• I got off a sweet shot from the point that would have been on goal had it not gone off of Amy’s butt.
• In the neutral zone I was trying to pick up the puck when one of their players ran into my front, and a second later another player ran into my behind. I extricated myself from the garage sale on ice and made it back to the bench, hardly any worse for the hit. And really, it took TWO of them to knock me down, so that means I’m tough, right?

We play again on Wednesday against ICE, the home team. Should be a good game. I’m looking forward to seeing Steph after the game so she can continue regaling all of us with stories about her recent adventure in Alaska.

My Sunday team - Purple - is a funny team. I think we’ve got close to the most points of any team in the league, and yet we’re winless after 3 weeks. We lost last week 6-7. Although one of those goals honestly did NOT go in even though the ref called it in - from her vantage point at the blue line. So I think maybe we could call it a tie, right? At least I’m going to. This week we lost 2-6. It’s tough to play with only 3 defenders, particularly when the team you’re playing against has a few more strong players than you do. I tried double-shifting a couple of times, and accidentally ended up on the ice for a 5-minute shift at the end of the second period. Remind me not to do that again. Ouch. I’m a decent player, but I’m not that good (or in shape)! When you play 3 defenders, you sometimes end up making bad on-the-fly changes, and those bad changes led directly to a couple of goals.  *grumble* As defenders we also didn’t play quite as conservatively as we should have given that we only had 3 of us - things to remember for future games. I can’t count the number of 2- and 3-on-0 rushes they got on us last night. Ugh. Patty our goalie played really well despite our lack of active defending. Thanks Patty!

Amy and I also subbed for the Gold team last Sunday. We won that game 6-2, which was a nice change from the other games we’ve played lately.

Finally, you all should head over to Chanda Gunn’s new blog. She and I had a lot of fun on Sunday morning setting it up. Dreamhost makes the installation super-easy, and it ended up being pretty quick to make a few modifications. Anyhow, she’s a really great person and you should go welcome her.

A small sampling (click on photo to embiggen, right click to open original photo at Flickr):

Bug or Flower?

Phlox and Peonies

Lupine (?) and Clematis

BUG!

And because no photo post would be complete without pictures of the poochies, I give you Miss Pooch and Still Life: Bliss with Ball.

What does your yard/porch/patio look like in the early summer?

2. It is still really hot. Maggie proves it:

Stay cool!

click to embiggen

We’ve got a pretty nifty setup this year. On the ground is a sheet of plywood, and clipped onto the top of it is a piece of plexiglass. We have 21 pucks. On the chain-link fence you’ll see part of my Christmas present from Amy - puck targets. We keep all that stuff in our front porch and simply drag it across the street when we want to shoot. I had to mow the grass between the “ice” and the “net” today, but it works!

Our garden is coming along nicely. I think we’ll be able to transplant the tomatoes and peppers by the middle of next week. Here are our Amish Snap Peas (all veggies other than our okra are from Seed Savers Exchange):

click to embiggen

Our purple clematis is taking over the front porch. I don’t mind because frankly, it’s gorgeous. I hope it keeps blooming for a long time.

click to embiggen

And Maggie guards the house while I sit and take photos of Amy shooting pucks (and myself…)

Hope you all are staying cool. We’re off to do a little more yardwork, and then I think we may try to go see a movie in a cool, cool theater.

• Upgraded WP from 2.2 to 2.5
• Deleted multiple plugins which WP 2.5 made obsolete
• Found a new theme (Greenery)
• Added several new plugins (Admin Dropdown Menu, Flickr Manager, FlickrRSS, and WP-Highslide)

This is a photo inserted using Flickr Manager:

This is a photo inserted using WP-Highslide (click on it - it’s pretty cool!)

The photos on the right side of the page are managed using FlickrRSS.

The one thing I need to do is to update the header/banner image at the top of the page, but I can’t do that until I have access to a better image editor than I have at home. That’s okay, though. I can wait.

So. What do you think?

Last night in my WAWHL game (our team is Raising Kane) I finally scored from the point! I’ve scored in other games, while playing wing, but never while playing defense. There was kind of a mess of people in front of the net on the right side of the ice, and my winger popped the puck up to me. The goalie (hi Lynn!) was completely screened and I saw a sliver of open net on the left side. Somehow the shot went through all the people and cleanly in the net. Needless to say, I was pretty excited. We ended up winning the game 5-1.

Our CWSHL team is Purple - thank GOD we aren’t the pink team. Their jerseys hurt my eyes. We lost our first game 5-6; total barnburner and lots of fun. Our team seems evenly balanced with a few rec/instructional players, a couple of D players, a few C players, and one or two B players. Should be a fun summer.

Some pictures -

April Showers: puck handling (note to self: keep head up when handling the puck), looking thoughtful, passing, Amy,  blogless Libby, headshot, Black Ice between periods

Champlain Shootout (whole games, can’t link to individual pics): Black Ice vs. Van Kleek Hill Griffins, Black Ice vs. West Chester Wildcats

I’ll be posting updates for future games, and will see if blogless Libby will let me post selections from her post-game writeups.

Otter with rope toy, Maggie with big stick.

Maggie enjoying the big stick in embarrassingly blissful ways.

Otter stealing the stick.

Maggie, sad. Otter, ecstatic.

Triumphant punk of a big dog.

FWIW, Maggie did get over it, and pretty quickly.

The thing I really like about this award is that I get to MUST pass it on to 10 people who I also love THIS MUCH! To display the love, just save the badge and re-post it on your awesome blog. And then pass it on.

Of course I’m going to cheat, since there’s at least one awesome person out there who doesn’t actually have a blog (but totally should and I’m not even lying.)

Without further ado, in no particular order, here are 10 fantastic folks who I love THIS MUCH:

Lori - the “i love you this much because you inspired me to hockey blog” award winner.

Jessica - the “i love you this much because you never give up and it’s finally paying off” award winner

Namastemama - the “i love you this much because you are my soul sister” award winner.

Star - the “i love you this much because you live a beautiful life and an honest life” award winner.

Katie - the “i love you this much because you’re a great writer and newly happily married” award winner.

Anj - the “i love you this much for being my entertaining role model” award winner.

(Blogless) Libby - the “i love you this much for your notes which make me laugh, your weekly hockey writeups which make me laugh, and your true-blue friendship” award winner.

(Password-protected) Jen - the “i love you this much for sharing a birthday with me and for being the first person I ever met after knowing each other online” award winner.

Rebecca - the “i love you this much for being so incredibly well-rounded” award winner.

Daddy Democrat - the “i love you this much for being a sane voice in an insane world and for sharing really funny stories about your boy” award winner.

Obviously there is a lot more that each of these fantastic people bring to the world than the small pieces I highlighted in their award nominations, and I encourage you to go and read their blogs to find out for yourself. And even MORE obviously, limiting myself to 10 people means that a bunch of you aren’t on that list above. Which is rather unfair. You are: Christy and Heather and Davey and Jody and Adam/Tiffy and Laura and Stella and Paula and Polly and Dana and Jen and you and you and YOU. I love you all this much!