summer, continued

It is remarkable how you can pick up life where you left it. Summer bliss, sunny days, bike rides and flower photos, continued. As if for a while, I had taken an unfamiliar path and was told to go back and resume on the main road.





And it is one heck of a nice main road.

I had mostly stopped work on my book during the last two weeks. When I tried to pick it up, it felt like I was pushing it forward to beat some dreadful deadline: hurry up, or you’ll be one of those cases where it goes to a publishing house posthumously. And then they’ll reject it and your kids will suffer terribly because they had hoped, they had really hoped that you had the talent and they could take pride in seeing your belated success.

So I didn’t write at all.

But today was easy. On the porch. Sometimes with Isis there, though he had momentarily fallen out of favor with me as he chose, sometime this morning, to regurgitate his food up on the table, on my pretty little cloth from the Basque region of Southern France. Ed said he would clean it up, but there are reasons why I never trust him to such tasks. He does a very incomplete job.

Still, the day proceeds beautifully. Writing is a breeze, a bike ride is delightful...





...a café moment – peaceful and satisfying.

Biking to the café, I paused to admire the truck farmers across the road. One was snipping flowers and she was so delightfully ensconced in the flower bed...





...that I got off the bike to get a closer shot.





She said – for you, I give these for you.

I haven’t money with me. Maybe later?

Go home later.

Tomorrow?

Oshkosh tomorrow. Market in Oshkosh. Here, for you, these for you.

I can’t take them!

Here. I add some here, too. And she adds beautiful fragrant trumpet lilies and it’s all so gorgeous!


 

Thank you.

Ed and I pedal back home and I come back to her out in the field, with a cold drink and a $5 bill.
She likes the water but is offended by the cash.
You know man there? She points to the house just across from where she is standing. I give him some too. He has cancer. Maybe be happy.

People are so generous. Really, at their core, people are so generous and so often, the less they have, the more they want to give.

I put the flowers on the table. It is a day of flowers. And good people. And not having to cook dinner because friends are doing it for me tonight. Too lucky. Just too lucky.