Today is the longest day of the year. In Michigan I always looked forward to this day, because it meant sunshine until at least 9:30 in the evening. It also heralded the true start of summer, and I absolutely love Michigan summers. Some people who work outside find themselves strongly connected to the land, with every sense very much attuned to the daily signs of the changing seasons- I've heard farmers describe that sort of 6th sense of the land, and I understand their feeling. It seems and feels very strange to be waking up on June 21st to a chilly cloudy day- by chilly I mean in the 60s here. Everything feels strangely wrong, because of course the seasons here, the climate, the sun angle, everything is different. I notice the difference everytime I step outside. Anyway I'm thinking today of wonderful hot summer days, warm nights with a slight breeze blowing, and thunderstorms that rain for 3 days running when it's so warm you can go out and play in the rain. :)
Today is also the official start of the Swavesey Festival- they've been planning it for months and months, and there's supposed to be a parade at 1 going by our house! I know I mentioned to you in the past about wanting to take every possible opportunity to meet people. I'm hoping to photograph as much of the festival goings on as I can to show you all. This is the first year of the festival, and the goal is to strongly build community here in Swavesey. I'm pring for that to happen as well, because Swavesey is a nice small village and there's no reason we can't all get to know each other. In Clinton, there's a population of about 3000, but we still recognized each others' cars driving down US 12, and watch out for each others' houses and at LEAST know the names of our neighbors. That hasn't been the case here. So my goal this week, amongst my other duties with STAG, is to use this chance to get past some British reserve and make some friends here. If you could pr with me that:
1. I would meet and learn the names of people living in a range of 5 houses on each side of ours (at least)
2. The Gardens Tour would not be rained out and that I would meet and learn the name of a person at each house where the gardens are open
3. I would connect with at least a few garden people in a more meaningful way through their gardens
4. We would meet some key people at the local ch's, including Bethel, St Andrew, and the Strict and Particular folks.
That's a tall order, now that I'm looking back over it! It might seem small, but the British reserve is truly hard to crack, and only Gd can make this a successful week for me in meeting people here.
I am still plugging away on my photo site- I've decided to keep using Phanfare until September when Smugmug implements a key feature that I need in order to host a split site (personal and pro.) My pro site is coming along and looking good (the front page at least) at www.kristidunlap.com and I've been restructuring and uploading new photos from the past 6 months in particular onto Phanfare. The albums aren't all complete, so any album without a thumbnail image is empty, FYI. Those are at www.gkdunlap.phanfare.com.
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