What's Next?: Week #13 of Life at Home in the Midst of a Pandemic: 5th Grade Graduation Edition

Graduation week! It truly is hard to believe that Sam has now officially graduated from elementary school and will be going on to middle school in the fall. I know it's cliche, but time flies! While these final few months of 5th grade were most decidedly what any of us wanted, she took it all in stride and did her best with what was thrown at her. We're incredibly proud of the young lady she's becoming, and it is so lovely to hear from her teachers how hard working and kind she is. Congratulations, Sam! We love you 💗

Monday: Still a few final days of school and work for the week to go... and after then later in the afternoon, the three of us headed over to the middle school for a bit of bike practice and then a nice walk in the woods. The rain on Saturday did a number on the trails. Wow! You really could tell how hard the rain fell by the wide swaths remaining from the rivers of water that had been rushing down the trails. (1.7 miles walked)

Pathway cleared by Saturday's rains on the trails

The blackberry flowers smell so good!

Wild geranium

Tuesday: Up early for a run on the snowmobile trails out to the dump in my new Wildhorse 6s. Comfy! And man, does the hay scented fern smell good right now! Wish I could bottle it up. Definitely one of my favorite smells. (7.0 miles)

Went into the office for the day and then Sam and I headed out for a walk once I got back home, while Ryan headed out for a run. The sheep laurel have started to bloom out along the powerlines. Love the magenta amongst the green. (1.8 miles walked)

💕

Wednesday: Feeling in a bit of a funk. Didn't get up to run and had a busy day working at home, trying to cram as much in as possible so that I could stop at 2:15 to watch the virtual Woodside 5th grade celebration with Sam. The school did a really nice job with the presentation, and I loved hearing the teachers read all the kid's names, and watching the slide show of baby/toddler and "now" pictures of Sam and her classmates. Such fun!

Hey, I recognize that kiddo! 💖

Then it was out for a walk on the powerlines on a nice afternoon with Sam. Blueberries are starting to emerge, still green right now, but it won't be long! And milkweed too. Definitely getting to be summertime! (1.8 miles walked)

Thursday: Misty, foggy morning with 100% humidity. Ran the cart paths and Heath. You don't realize how busy the spiders have been until you're out on a misty morning where the dew and rain droplets make the spiderwebs noticeable. They are everywhere! Beautiful. (7.0 miles)

Got back early enough to have time to head to Target for a quick trip and up to Six River Farm and Fairwinds Farm to pick up some fresh produce. Yum!

Hurray for strawberry season! 🍓💗

Showers were predicted throughout the day, and sure enough, just as we were getting ready to head out to the school during our allotted time slot for the 5th grade drive-up celebration, it started pouring. We waited it out and took off once things had slowed to a drizzle.

The school did a really nice job with yesterday's assembly and Thursday's drive-up event, and I got tears in my eyes when Sam got out of the car and all the teachers, who had been standing outside for 2+ hours, started cheering and clapping for her. Seriously, all the feels 💕 We feel incredibly lucky to have been part of the Woodside community, and truly thank everyone at the school for making elementary school such a great experience for Samantha.

Can hardly believe that we now have a rising 6th grader. Congratulations, Samantha! We are so proud of you! 😘🎉

With Mrs. Walling, her homeroom teacher

Whoever did the work to give each student their own individualized cupcake is truly amazing!

What a fun idea!

We celebrated with gelato for lunch 😋🍨🎉, Facetimed with the grandparents and then finished off the day with a big sushi dinner!

Friday: Another humid morning. Felt rather uninspired but headed out anyway. Did a rather random mishmash of roads and trails and somehow managed to get the mileage I had originally hoped for. Ha! Oh, and hit 1,000 miles for the year 1 mile into the run. I'll take it! (8.0 miles)

Got home, did the grocery shopping and a quick clean of the house before lunch, and then we hit the road around 2:00 for an afternoon adventure. Plan A was to hike Morse Mountain and spend some time at Sewall Beach, but alas, the lot had been full since 10:00 am (!!). We had hoped since it was a weekday afternoon, we'd luck out but apparently we need to do a bit better planning for that one! So, we headed for Plan B, a fairly nearby, way down a back road, rather random hike out in the Nature Conservancy's Basin Preserve on the Denny Reed Trail. But for a random choice, it was pretty neat!

It started out through overgrown hardwood forest on an old road, wandering through some wet areas, where we found one red eft 😍 as well as some poison ivy 😠, and then abruptly turned off the road, where the forest changed dramatically to old growth pine forest. It was a very pretty walk amongst the tall trees, the floor covered with bunchberry, false lily of the valley and the leaves of gold thread, out to the water's edge.

Do you see the face in the rock outcropping?

Pretty turqouise waters

Can you spot them?!

There was a ton of mica out there, and we found the remains of the old mica mine mentioned in the trailhead sign. Really cool. Plus some gorgeous quartz and interesting red and orange rocks. What a neat spot!

After a fair mount of time wandering around on the rocks and admiring the views, we retraced our steps through the woods, and then took a slightly different route back through the hardwood section, which went through what must have been an old farm and homestead, complete with old apple trees, a rusty car being overtaken by weeds and grape vines. A nice quiet meander on a Friday afternoon. (2.4 miles walked)

Saturday: Beautiful morning. Still a bit humid but cooler and breezy and very sunny. Hit the powerlines and some of the Gone Fishing mountain bike trails for a nice morning meander. Iris, sheep laurel, blackberry brambles, cinnamon and hay scented ferns, a group of six goldfinch flitting, a common yellowthroat calling and several swallowtail butterfly dancing about. (8.1 miles)

Spent the rest of the morning doing some household chores and then finally, mid-afternoon, we got Sam out on her bike for a short ride around the neighborhood. She has gotten good enough that if we want to keep up, we're going to have to start running next to her! (0.6 miles walked while Sam biked)

Then we headed across the street for a short walk before dinner. Beautiful afternoon out, and most definitely summer out there - the delicate spring wildflowers are gone, replaced with green, green and more green, with the summer laurel, blackberry, iris, yellow birds-eye trefoil, clover, buttercups and daisies adding color. (2.0 miles walked)

Sunday: It's not that I am feeling unmotivated to run. I want to be out there, and it makes me happy to do so. I've been putting in consistent miles, and am diligently working towards my goal of 2,000+ miles this year. I haven't taken a week off from running since the week after Western States last year, and as long as I feel good, I plan to continue to carry on, but when it comes to getting in the long efforts, recently I am just feeling uninspired.

It seems like my Strava feed is filled with people putting up huge miles and taking on big efforts, and I am just like, meh. Some of it is that I've been sticking close to home, and while I am grateful for my home trails, I am missing doing some exploring and hitting new places, and also missing having access to the Cathance trails as part of my routes. And honestly too, a big part of it is that I feel it is highly unlikely that I'll be running No Business in October. Not because they will cancel necessarily, but because I don't think either Ryan or I feel like the travel to get there and the contact during the race will be worth the potential risk. Yes, it's still 4 months away, but I don't see the status of things or the spread of the coronavirus changing much even by then. I'm not giving up hope and giving up my spot just yet, but I'm also not feeling completely optimistic.

So, the desire and the push to get out there and run the longer runs just hasn't been there the past few weeks. I'm a driven person, but I've always said that 10-15 is the longest I'd likely want to go if I didn't have a big race on the horizon and it seems I'm living that out right now. Hopeful that I can turn it around, as like I said I haven't given up completely on No Business yet and I've gotten in at least one 20-miler a month since December, which seems a good streak to keep... so, I have a few weekends left this month to pull that off at least! 😉

Realize this probably sounds like crazy talk and while I rationally recognize that I shouldn't be complaining about my running and while I am truly grateful to be healthy and to be able to get in the miles I am getting in, this what is in my head at the moment... Really, all of this is the just long way of saying that 10 miles was, yet again, enough this morning 😏😆 Ran roads around town and listened to the Morning Shakeout podcast with Mary Cain. Great listen. (10.0 miles)

Lots of Dame's Rocket along the Androscoggin

Then after an early lunch, we headed up to Boothbay to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. With Covid-19, they've changed their policies, much like almost every other public-serving space, so we had to make a reservation for a specific time as they were limiting access, and of course, bringing our masks was a necessity as well. Honestly, it is such a large piece of property, that it was really only truly "busy" in the main garden, and even then, it was fairly easy to either stay away from others or just to put on our mask as we passed them. I thought things went really smoothly and we didn't feel like we were at risk at all.

It was a glorious afternoon to be out and we really enjoyed our visit! So much beauty on a really spectacular piece of property, and they do a truly phenomenal job with the manicured gardens.

We meandered through the main gardens out to the rhododendron garden, where a lot of the blooms had passed, but there was still some good color, and then made our way back along the shore path along the water, through the meditation garden and out along some of the un-manicured singletrack that runs along the far edges of the property. I'd say those trails get very little to no traffic and they certainly hadn't been maintained, although there was signage and blazes. So we had that stretch all to ourselves!

All in all, a really fun afternoon enjoying the flowers and the gardens together. (3.6 miles walked)