Today I lay down to take a nap and dreamed I was writing my paper about Beowulf, hospitality, and monsters, right down to the details of quoting bits of Old English to myself in my sleep. Hopefully I wasn't talking aloud.

Rain has come, at long last. It's Little 500 weekend in Bloomington--Little 500 is a bike race that takes place on the third or fourth Saturday in April each year--and everyone has been out on the streets partying. The parties seem to start on Monday and run through until Sunday at the earliest. Last night, when I was biking home from Scott's house, knots of college students were standing on the sidewalks, talking and drinking, or filling the porches of the historic houses along First Street.

But now it's raining. I rather hope that this will drive some of the merrymaking indoors since people tend to get pretty raucous. The Little 500 phenomenon always puzzles me: right before finals, at the end of the term, when a lot of professors give tests or assign essays before the major projects are actually due.

The rain is also good because we bought more plants today: spirea, marigolds, phlox, saxifrage, begonias, and fuschia. Scott is excited about filling pots to put around the porch, and I'm excited about having plants from the garden in Stillwater that I will recognize here. Also the borders around the house are mostly full of ivy and dark evergreens, so the phlox, saxifrage, and spirea will provide some bright color.

Back to writing that paper now.

Now Playing: Bach, Mass in B Minor, Credo/Aria: Et in spiritum sanctum.

The end of school has made this blog suffer significantly, it seems. Thanks to my own coursework, teaching, and wedding-planning, free time has been hard to come by. Today I'm studying at Scott's house, sitting on the deck, while he does yard work. The results are beautiful, and will be still more lovely, hopefully, as the summer arrives.

This is our crazy bed: marigolds and zinnias off to the sides, among the hostas and rabbit's ear, and lots and lots of wildflower seeds in that big swathe along one side, the patch that currently looks empty. The azalea blooming by the front door is incredibly vibrant right now.

Along University, down the south side of the yard, are lots of rose bushes, interspersed with Russian sage and two butterfly bushes. 

Blanche bemusedly surveys her domain. The shrub almost directly in front of her, to the left of the wooden trellis, is actually a Jane magnolia tree, a saucer magnolia.