The last day of summer (for Greyson, anyway)

School starts tomorrow for Greyson, and Reece starts on Thursday with half days that day and Friday. We're still trying to get into a good sleeping and waking pattern, so hopefully Greyson will be able to wake up at 7:15 tomorrow morning. He'll be at the upper elementary school, and his bus picks him up at 8:15 rather than the 8:55 for the lower elementary, so it will definitely be an adjustment. This, combined with signs I'm seeing of Greyson trying to break free from Reece a bit, tells me we might be moving toward separate bedrooms for the boys sooner than we thought.

Greyson will be playing the French horn this year, as all 5th graders are required to either pick an instrument or join the chorus. We were able to borrow one from a neighbor who also spent some time giving Greyson a mini lesson, which really gave him some confidence. He also had an intro session at his school this evening, and the music teacher even got me excited about playing it! Really, I just want to get a used piano, but we'd probably have to build yet another room for it and THAT'S not happening.

So, about our garden. We came home from Michigan to this:

We don't even need to exaggerate that the sunflowers are as big as the house! (Or, more accurately, the garage.) Since then, a few of them were taken out by a storm, but we salvaged the blooms and are hoping to get some seeds out of them. Oh, and that mess in front of the sunflowers is two cucumber plants trying to take over the world. Or at least our backyard. They've even been trying to climb up the sunflowers and I have to speak sternly to them about boundaries. We are also picking whole bowlfuls of cherry tomatoes about every other day and giving them away to unsuspecting neighbors and relatives. Because we're also getting cherry and grape and Roma tomatoes from our CSA. And I've discovered that 1) I don't have any desire to peel and seed tomatoes, and 2) there aren't that many uses for cherry tomatoes beyond salads and picking and eating them right from the vine (yummy, yes, but best not to eat your weight in them I imagine). So I'm taking notes for next year that involve fewer cherry tomato plants, only one cucumber plant, adding dill and more basil, and probably not even trying peppers again. They were our only dud. The eggplants were surprisingly successful but not too overwhelming, so I might keep those. Just have to get Nick to come back and make homemade baba ganouj with them, though.