Summer Time!

And now, something completely different. SUMMER! This year, I started my summer out right. Two days in a windowless room as part of a curriculum committee! The fine state of Ohio has revised the state visual arts standards and, as a district, we were working to adapt our curriculum to the state standards in order to adopt it for this coming school year. I am actually really excited about the new standards because they are much more reflective of what I already teach. They can be seen here. Just click on the link that reads "Visual Art." School ended last Thursday, the 31st. The committee met on Friday and this past Monday. I was really happy to get that work out of the way early in the summer. 

On Tuesday, I really got my summer started. I figured if I wasn't going to be in a windowless room, I would take advantage of my freedom by building a retaining wall for a raised flower bed. Why not? What more fun could I have on my first real day of summer than excavating and leveling a trench, then single-handedly moving one ton (literally one full ton) of limestone into place to form the wall? This was my first attempt at doing anything like this and I was pretty happy with how it turned out. Now I need to get soil to fill it in, plant something cool, then reseed the grass around it.

Before and after with a shot of the stone thrown in for good measure.

 My next project will be to build an outdoor sectional seating area for the deck I built last summer. I may post some plans once I've got them drawn up. Happy summer!