A look back at 2021

So we thought the pandemic would end in 2021? Did we? Oh well. However that goes (not well, at the time of writing this), we can at least recap the year in our usual end-of-year post, starting with a photo of a red-tailed hawk captured at the Pennypack Ecological Restoration area in January (with D’s Fujifilm X-T2, equipped with the long lens D got for Christmas 2020):

January also marked the start of our second semester in which we taught completely online. It was to be just as challenging as in the fall of 2020, and not worth additional complaining about here.

We marked D’s birthday with a Zoom visit, which allowed far-flung friends Jelena and Rob to join in from Belfast, which normally would have been a very expensive proposition. It was a lovely virtual visit with lots of good friends, much appreciated.

February started with a snow storm on February 2nd and snow stayed on the ground for weeks. Neighbors down the block built a giant snowman, seen below as it was being built, and then on February 8th and February 15th.

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We also made a trip with our cameras to the Morris Arboretum, where we saw a lovely snowpeople family.

Opportunities to use the long lens on the Fujifilm X-T2 were offered by birds on our bird feeders with snow in the background, like this cardinal.

Early in March, we paid another visit to the Morris Arboretum, when D played with the long lens once more, capturing a red tailed hawk in flight and then nicely posing on a tree.

A couple of days after these photos were made, the sun was out at lunch time and we we had our lunch at the top of the stairs to the porch, not missing the opportunity to take a selfie. This incidentally documents how D looked after shaving his beard to ensure N95 masks fit his face as well as possible. (Later on, he allowed a tiny part of the beard to grow again, where it would be completely covered by the mask — picture later).

A few days later, it was time for Marianne to get her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19; D followed in 8 days with his first dose of the Moderna vaccine.

April 4th was Easter. We got together outdoors in our yard with D’s former student Olena (the one was gave us outdoors broadsword lessons last summer — see our recap of 2020). We had a big, beautiful, and sturdy chocolate egg as something special for dessert. It was so sturdy that it came with a wooden hammer to break it open! It was well worth the trouble to break it open, as it was filled with candy and chocolates.

Later in April, we had the chance to see some nice tulips at the Morris Arboretum.

In early May we had our first dining out experience since March of 2020, in the outdoor “cabins” of Charlie Was A Sinner in Philadelphia. The occasion was to celebrate the birthday and make some engagement photos of D’s former student Sierra and her fiancé. Here’s us toasting them:

May also saw Arcadia University’s in-person graduation, and we hosted an outdoor party in our back yard for M’s department colleagues right after. M continued to get more settled in as department chair all year.

On the last day of May, we were delighted to be able to celebrate our dear friend Suzanne’s birthday with her, Kevin, Lily, and the latest canine family member, Talulah, in Suzanne and Kevin’s cabin in PA:

In June we enjoyed a week-long driving vacation in Germantown, NY, in the Hudson Valley. We stayed at a wonderful AirBnB and had many opportunities to be in nature and hang out with M’s brother Anthony and his wife Barbara.

Incidentally, as far as D was concerned, this was quite the year for bird photos. Here’s one that made D happy to have taken the long lens on this trip.

Near the end of June we had a quick but delightful visit by Jill who had traveled from California with her youngest son Owen to check out local colleges (he’s already at the age of college-hunting!). On one evening, we had an outdoors dinner with them and a friend of Owen’s and his mother at Tamarindo’s, and then took them to our back yard where the young people saw fireflies for the first time in their lives. It was a magical moment for all, especially when fireflies landed on them.

July started with a short staycation in Philadelphia. During these few days, we got to celebrate M’s birthday and the wedding of our friends Sierra and Jacob, and got to see the new wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In July we also had our second of three driving vacations, this one to an AirBnB on the East shore of Cayuga Lake. The less said about the quality of this AirBnB the better (in future, we are only going to consider AirBnBs whose hosts are rated as Superhosts), but we did get a nice visit to NY wine country and M’s old haunts in Ithaca and Geneva, and got to hang out with our friend Eileen, who was able to join us for a few days of wine and spirits tasting and great eating surrounded by magnificent scenery.

In mid-August we spent a few days at a family reunion in New Hampshire, in M’s brother Jerry’s vacation rental, where we were treated to the famous Uncle Jerry breakfast, cooked on our porch at the crack of dawn. In accordance with global climate change, we were hit by an extreme heat wave. We did manage a nice outing on a not-too-stifling morning. Another way to cope with the heat was to buy two kiddie pools to put our feet into while sipping cold wine, to skip pebbles at a river, and to have ice cream for lunch.

On the way back from New Hampshire, we stayed in New Haven for a few days where we had a lovely time visiting Sierra’s family. Here’s us on a boat tour of the Thimble Islands.

Soon after our return home, it was time for us to start going to school for in-person, masked teaching. It was challenging but turned out to be less of a COVID-spreading activity than we were fearing, thanks to vaccine mandates and masking. M had to deal with including remote students via Zoom into her live classes, which proved to be an endless source of frustration. Here’s D’s first day back, waiting for the train to take him to Temple’s campus, donning the highest-quality N95 mask he could find.

September came in with a bang: a very severe storm that spawned a tornado that missed our house only by a couple of miles and that dumped a ridiculous amount of rain in the space of a couple of hours. We took our dinner to the basement to finish it, as we were under a tornado warning, and then we did a little work to help our sump pump deal with the water influx. Thankfully, we had no permanent damage, but we are well aware that our basement walls need some upgrading.

We enjoyed a weekend escape to Ocean City, NJ, on September 11-12, with Charlie and Nicki. D is partial to this photo he made of M on a boat tour of the Ocean City Bay.

Near the end of October, we took a short trip to a lovely AirBnB in Shawnee, PA, near the Delaware Water Gap. This also gave us the opportunity to visit Bushkill Falls for the first time.

We spend Halloween visiting with Suzanne and Kevin in Schnabel’s woods:

In November we continued our outings in nature and we had a lovely, intimate Thanksgiving at Suzanne and Kevin’s, among fully vaccinated and boosted friends. I can’t not include this picture of M from Bowman’s Hill Wildflower preserve:

In early December we went to see the Morris Arboretum’s Holiday Train display and to a wine tasting and outdoors hanging out by a fire event at Unionville winery in New Jersey. For Christmas, we took a short driving vacation to an AirBnB in the Rhinebeck, NY, where we were happy to be able to visit with Anthony, Barbara, their daughter and our niece April, and April’s sweet dog Cascade. Here’s a photo by M that shows the rest of the gang by Blithewood Mansion:

It’s time to end this massively lengthy post. We wish all a healthy 2022, with the pandemic receding and life returning closer to what we had been considering normal!