Fulcrum Acoustics warehouse. Photo by Andrea Shea/WBUR.

I’m so excited to share a link to the radio piece by Andrea Shea of WBUR, one of two NPR stations in Boston. She dropped by the Fulcrum Acoustic studio to interview David Gunness and my husband Rich Frembes. You can listen to the piece and/or read the transcript at Mass. Audio Geeks Bring Bumpin’ Speakers To Vegas Dance Clubs | WBUR.

The piece aired twice this morning and will have a national run next week.

You can find out more about Fulcrum online or on Twitter and Facebook.

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Purple pansies are simple flowers but are some of my favorites for spring.

It’s been a weird weather week – with temps that ranged from a low of 31 degrees F on Wednesday morning to a high of 81 degrees F the next day. I jumped the gun and planted tomatoes and basil in our vegetable garden and had to cover them for two nights this week to keep them from frost damage.

Newly-planted basil in the garden.

From now until the end of June, the list of garden chores is extensive: spreading mulch, pruning, planting,  cutting new edges, seeding the lawn, etc. Hopefully I will remember to add to the blog too. I plan to post more photos of the garden as it progresses over the summer – to have a visual record of the garden but to also serve as a warm reminder in the middle of the long winter.

Happy planting, friends!

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Yesterday, I spent a day volunteering with Growing Places Garden Project, a Massachusetts non-profit that builds food gardens for low-income families and teaches the skills to maintain them. My employer, a software company in MetroWest, gives us 8 hours of paid volunteer time each year and I took advantage of the warm weather to volunteer with Growing Places for outdoor garden builds.

A group of 11th graders were part of the build team at our first site in Fitchburg.

Usually there is one build site per day, but I had the chance to work on two sites. Both of the sites were in Fitchburg. The garden boxes and soil were delivered ahead of time, so we loaded the truck with wheel barrows, shovels, rakes, fencing, soil amendments, seedlings, and other gardening accessories.

A group of 11th-graders from a local charter high school joined us at the first build site. Nothing makes me feel older than listening to 17-year-olds muse about how fast 9th grade went by! Excuse me while I try to remember my 20s.

We had many little helping hands at the second build site in Fitchburg.

With temperatures in the low 70s, it was a glorious day to be outside and not stuck in an office. By the end of the day, I helped install five raised garden beds between two gardens in Fitchburg and watered the Prichard Street Community Garden. Not a bad day …

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Thousands of daffodils in bloom at Tower Hill.

Winter in New England seems like it lasts forever. Two weeks ago, the temperatures still dipped into the mid-30s at night but spring has arrived with a vengeance. This past Sunday, we welcomed the warm weather with another visit to Tower Hill Botanic Garden.

Our previous visit was 6 weeks before, when it was too cold to venture outside. This time, we walked the paths at Tower Hill to see the 25,000+ blooming bulbs. The field of daffodils in the Systematic Garden area is amazing to see.

Saucer Magnolia in bloom at Tower Hill.

I also fell in love with the blooming trees on the property. The above Saucer Magnolia is one of my favorites, so much so that I’m in search of one to plant in our yard.

So if you’re craving a dose of beautiful spring flowers, consider a trip to Tower Hill. The grounds will only get more beautiful as the season progresses.

Tulips at Tower Hill.

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Running shoes left by mourners are part of the Boston Marathon bombing victims memorial in Boston’s Copley Square – April 25, 2013

By now, everyone in the world knows what happened in Boston on April 15, 2013. I didn’t know anyone who was hurt in the bombings, nor was I in the city at the time it happened. For a while now, I thought that I had nothing to say or to share about what happened. There are so many dramatic, sad, tragic, inspiring, uplifting, or hopeful stories from that day. Me? A coworker and I were sitting in my cushy office and fussing over a SharePoint form around the time when people were losing limbs in the street.

I don’t live in the city anymore. I’m one of those Boston college grads who eventually moved to the suburbs and now only visit the city on the weekends. But guess what? Boston is still my city, and it always will be. Allston was my front yard and Back Bay was my playground for almost 8 years. I spent my 20s walking past the Prudential Center on Boylston, window shopping on Newbury, and, yes, partying on Landsdowne.

Every Patriot’s Day since my college days, I would be somewhere on the Boston Marathon route cheering the runners. Sometimes it was at checkpoints along the way to Boston; sometimes it was near the finish line where you can see the joy and exhaustion as each runner comes in. This year was the first year that I didn’t have that day off from work and it was so strange to be missing this event.

I haven’t visited Boston since before the bombings. Yesterday, it was time to play hooky from work and spend some time in the city. (If I work with you and you are reading this post, I took vacation time and wasn’t pretending to be sick. Unlike some of you slackers. Just kidding. #notreallykidding)

A runner left her shirt and name tag at the Boston Marathon bombing victims memorial in Boston’s Copley Square. The name tag says “Nikki Mansfield RUNNER!” – April 25, 2013

It was a laugh and cry kind of day. My husband and I took off early from work to see the touring cast of “The Book of Mormon” at the Opera House. That musical is highly offensive and so very, very hilarious. We needed to laugh. Not just the two of us, but everyone in the Opera House. We just needed to laugh.

After the show, we walked across Boston Common and the Public Garden over to Boylston Street to visit the growing memorial in Copley Square. It was around 5:00 p.m., very close to rush hour. The crowd wasn’t overwhelming in number and it was eerily quiet. Most people spoke in whispers if they spoke at all.

“Love is Louder” is one of many messages on this One Boston board in Copley Square. #BostonStrong

This was definitely the “cry” portion of our day. The memorial is overwhelming. People have left hats, shirts, stuffed animals, flowers, running shoes, running singlets … it was too much to take in at once.

A beautiful stuffed white tiger is part of the Boston Marathon bombing victims memorial in Boston’s Copley Square – April 25, 2013

Further down Boylston Street, we walked by Forum restaurant, site of the second bomb. The restaurant is still boarded up but their web site says, in part, “Forum will be closed until further notice, as we are now a crime scene. Our beautiful restaurant sustained heavy damage and will need to be rebuilt after the site is cleared.”

We kept walking and found ourselves in front of Marathon Sports, site of the first bomb.

The memorial in front of Marathon Sports, one of the two Boston Marathon bombing sites.

There was a crowd gathered in front of the store. We stopped briefly but then went inside. We had come to the Back Bay area to spend some money at local businesses that were closed for 8 days while the FBI and the police cleared that stretch of Boylston Street. We should buy running shoes. Yes, perfect.

I won’t bore you with a paragraph about gait analysis, but I will tell you that we got to meet the lovely and talented Kim Douglas (@kmbrlynn on Twitter, also visit her blog) in real life. Kim, who works at Marathon Sports, is friends with our friend Kailani K-M. We didn’t know this until Kailani saw my tweets about visiting Marathon Sports and “introduced” us.  Twitter love for the win!

With bags in hand, it was time to walk back to our car and head home to the ‘burbs. We were both quiet, emotional, and tired. It was strange to walk Boylston Street and see how people had returned to normal life – chatting on their phone, waiting for a bus, hailing a cab – and know how terrible the scene was just over a week ago.

Looking up, I saw the John Hancock Tower set against a brilliant blue sky. It was perfect and beautiful and so very Boston. Yes, Boston is my city, and it always will be.

Boston’s John Hancock Tower

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