Yee-hah

I wish I had a picture from last night's Dunwoody High School Senior Blast: our son riding the mechanical bull.

We stepped back, giving our son room to go solo, driving himself at midnight to the DHS annual event and back home again at 6 am. A trial run for the parents, who probably have hovered a bit too much thanks to the never-far-from-mind challenges of Crohn's.

He's fine. And ready for college.

We couldn't be happier.

He had a great time last night, thanks to a huge cadre of parent volunteers who organized and staffed an event filled with music, casino games (strictly for fun), hypnotist, prizes, and more.

I really want a picture of him on that mechanical bull. 

Adam and Anna Grace on the lawn after the ceremony. Graduating high school senior and incoming high school freshman.

Our favorite graduation photo. This is quintessential Adam ... reserved, checking out the scene, relaxed now that the "have to" part is over.

The Dunwoody Stipple

What were they thinking?

Our home was built in the early 1970's, in a somewhat straightforward Williamsburg/Federal four-over-four-and-a-center-door style with lots of dark paneling, dentil moulding, slate floor entry, and shaggy carpet. We know that because it was still in that condition when we bought it ten+ years ago. We've done quite a bit of updating, but one thing remains ... the stippled ceilings. The sheetrock crews evidently loved stipples, swacking a mop-like gadget up against the ceilings, creating this floral-like textured effect.

Better than popcorn ceilings. But not nearly as nice as SMOOTH ceilings.

We had a leak in an upstairs bathroom, which flowed through to the kitchen ceiling. The plumber had to cut a hole in the ceiling to fix the problem. Which lead to another necessary repair, to the sheetrock.
Not so simple. Oh, the sheetrock and mud were pretty straightforward. The challenge? The blasted stippled ceiling.  We got estimates from a series of handy-people who said, with great honesty, they weren't sure they could match the stipple, but would try.

Our handy-dandy contractor is hard at work right now, cutting sheetrock, screwing it into place, mudding the seams, and preparing his hand-made stipple tool.

Keeping my fingers crossed that the results will look somewhat seamless. So to speak.

Tree down.

That large red maple in the front yard? The beautiful, massive, overarching canopy that shades our home and accents our front yard?

The one whose shallow roots soak up moisture and prevent any kind of grass growth?

It's doomed.

Last year, I treated an emerging hole in the trunk after carpenter ants got inside.

This year, they're crunching so much that sawdust puddles around the base of the tree. And the carpenter ants now have a well-worn highway not only to that hole but a large wound in an upper branch, the remnant of the limb that fell and hit our house ten years ago.

I've consulted with two arborists and six tree companies. All say the same: it's going to fall down, and it can't be saved. (Only one told us want we wanted to hear, that they could TRY, that they might, possibly, perhaps save the main part of the tree - but couldn't promise that it would work and that I'd probably end up having to spend the same amount of money again to take it down.)

The bids on removing that tree are spectacularly wide-ranging, and all are big-gulp expensive.

I'll have to transplant all the recently planted hellebores and rethink the foundation plants chosen for their shade-loving traits. Pressure wash the house (now nicely screened by the canopy). And wait six months to a year before we can plant another tree.

Darn it. The house is going to look naked without our beautiful maple tree.

A small hole with a huge rotted area in the trunk. We treated it last year, killing the carpenter ants and filling the hole with expanding foam, to no avail.

The original culprit: when the massive limb fell and hit our house, it caused an ugly wound in the center limb. Now it's twice as large and filled with rot and insects.

The evidence: I washed away the sawdust a week ago and another pile is quickly forming.

An American Town

May in Dunwoody comes with a flurry of endings and beginnings, each tinged with an old-fashioned red-white-and-blue aura of small town life. Final exams, awards and honors programs, neighborhood block parties, festivals, season-ending games, Mother's Day, planting vegetables, yearbooks, spring cleaning, college acceptances, vacation planning, fundraisers, school dances, Scout crossover ceremonies, high school graduation, concerts .... May is the busiest month of the year.

It's exhilarating. And exhausting.

Of all the celebrations, perhaps one of the most heartwarming was our neighborhood block party, held to celebrate the end of a long and hard fought battle against a detrimental rezoning decision. Our wonderful neighbors surprised Terry with warm words and a gift, neither of which he expected. We lingered late into the evening, enjoying catching up, sharing news, and sampling an amazing array of foods. 

The stressful, stunningly expensive effort - more than $20,000 shared by neighbors and community supporters to fight a large daycare playground behind our homes - has become a template for other groups and communities facing similar decisions. We learned much about our city and legal system as well as just how complex our relationships can be.

Life lessons:

• Friends, neighbors, colleagues, and fellow volunteers will sometimes find themselves on opposing sides of critical issues. How we deal with each other has far-reaching consequences. I choose civility, setting aside disagreements for the sake of congeniality and progress in other arenas. 
• NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) is a term used with scorn by folks who are not directly impacted by eminent domain, rezoning decisions, and misdirected development. Take care. You may need those same neighbors someday when it's your NIMBY concern.
• The City's code of ordinance should not force citizens to expensive court actions rather than an intermediary Council veto.  I don't know how much our City had to spend on the legal action, but it was wholly unnecessary.  Even if the Council was aware that its rezoning committee's decision was deeply flawed, its own code of ordinances prevented it from taking action or intervening.
• Placing volunteers in powerful and influential committees such as Rezoning and Community Development without training and oversight is disingenuous and dangerous.

There are life lessons to be gained in every experience, particularly the hard ones. Mine is that you can love a town and want to help it thrive even when sometimes it lets you down.  I value the gadflies, those people who stand at the public speaker microphone, write letters to the editor, blog, and send emails because they are active, engaged, and concerned enough to speak up.  I am grateful for volunteers who are willing to take on overwhelming and sometimes thankless roles in policy-making. And I appreciate community leaders like John Heneghan, who listen to diatribes and disagreements with courtesy and respect.

It isn't easy, but it's quintessentially American to be a community of individuals, not head-nodding sheep.

And now, a few highlights from the Knitternall family album as May builds to a crescendo of activities before it bows to more leisurely summer pace.

Going to the Renaissance Faire means pulling an ensemble together from the family costume stash.

The PCMS Band's Spring Concert drew a huge crowd; it included a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society in memory of beloved teacher Keith Davis, who passed away this Spring. Both of our kids had Mr. Davis for 7th Grade Language Arts.

Dunwoody High School recognizes its college-bound students ... so many, they circled the gym nearly twice.

Peachtree Charter Middle School recognized its top students in academics, music, character, drama, and more.

There's a chipmunk in the hellebores.

I fell in love with hellebores while working at Dunwoody Nature Center. There's a spot at the rear of the main building where they thrive in purple, pink, and pearly white beauty, spreading assertively toward the pollinators' garden.

During last year's Spring Plant Sale, the master gardeners divided a few of the larger sections as passalongs. I bought one to see how hellebores would do in the Knitternall yard, despite its tremendous liabilities (huge water-hogging maple tree, shallow dirt thanks to said maple tree's root system).

It LOVED my sad front yard. So this year, I sent an all-call to the master gardeners, asking if they would mind dividing their own collections for the passalong sale (benefitting Dunwoody Nature Center).  One darling gardener immediately brought me three large transplants, which I promptly installed beneath the maple tree's massive canopy.  This morning, a tiny chipmunk peeked from beneath one of the hellebore's large leaves, looking skyward for passing hawks before it scampered beneath our front porch. (And that's another story. Chipmunks and their tunnel systems are NOT good things for plant roots and foundations.)

When I left the park yesterday, I saw about a dozen hellebores sitting in pots, ready for passalong sales.

Dibs!

Dunwoody Nature Center's Spring Plant Sale

I'm ordering quite a few treasures through the Dunwoody Nature Center's Spring Native Plant Sale. At least I know they'll LIKE the crazy Georgia climate. My yard is nothing if not challenge-burdened:

• a trifecta maple tree that sucks all the moisture out of the front yard
• a back yard with looming hardwoods, meaning little to no sunshine
• an east-facing house
• side yards with little to no chance of more than 3 hours of sunlight

Nonetheless, the curbside vegetable garden is bustling as peas cast creeping tendrils toward the trellis, romaine lettuce is sending shoots sunward, and radishes are thrilled by the early spring warmth.

I kill more plants than finally thrive, which makes the survivors even more dear.

Order some plants from Dunwoody Nature Center and support their worthy mission: to give everyone some blissful greenspace in our increasingly urban community.

We want your telephone number.

The Girl Scouts want my social security number to verify I'm safe around my daughter and her friends during GS activities. Google wants my telephone number in case my blog gets hijacked or I lose my password. The library wants to see my driver's license every now and then to make sure it's really me checking out the latest bestseller. The United States government wants to see my in my altogether before I can board a plane. Every website I visit wants to leave a few unsavory cookies on my computer to track my interests.

I am not comfortable with mandatory identity-proving procedures, the loss of privacy, and the increased demand by governmental and commercial entities for personal information. I am more comfortable with anonymity. (I know, that seems a bit perverse considering the very public nature of this blog.)

It's insidious. Gradually, over time, I've grown accustomed to the relentless demand for personal information everywhere I go, from the grocery store to my kids' schools. I am asked to share my address, telephone number, and social security number for a background check, my socioeconomic status and interests "for marketing purposes," and proof of medical insurance and liability waiver to have my cholesterol checked.


I am pragmatic about the reasons for these intrusions. I recognize that our culture and way of life are in flux, wrestling with the transition from everybody-is-the-same to an uneasy imbalance among government, commercial, and personal interests.

Another morning is dawning. I'm packing school lunches, Preschool Phonics gear, and freelance paperwork for several projects due today while I hold down the fort at Dunwoody Nature Center as interim director.

I'm also making sure I have my driver's license, insurance card, frequent customer card for the grocery store, checking account card, credit card, smart phone with contact information, remote log in for my desktop, personal hotspot, and memorized passwords and user names for the many accounts I work on each day ... without which, I could not function at all and all of which reveal so much about my personal life to strangers around the world.

Kinda creepy, isn't it?