growing things

With adult children, sometimes days and weeks pass and I can't really tell you where they are and what they're doing.  Other times, one or both will be in and around my world and I get to feel their energy and zest up close, as if they still lived with me and woke up to the same meals that I do.  

This week-end the older girl and I did some usual and unusual spins together: first, around the market. Yes, that's common for us. (How can you not buy from the farming families in these days of such stressful growing conditions?)

And, my girl and I biked around the city, completing that twenty mile loop that we love to do every now and then.

She tells me we somehow always hit this bike trail in prime blooming time - when the prairie flowers are at their best. Maybe. It surely looks as if this year, we come at a time of prairie magic. (Can you tell that I don't always pause to take a photo?)

I leave her downtown and continue along the path that now borders one of our big lakes. Where fishermen still reel in a good number of... bluegill (that's a guess on my part) on a hot summer afternoon.

And then it's back to the prairie fields for me. With the gay feather and the black eyed girls and the lacy Queen Ann.

And speaking of blooms, this, too, is the day for me to continue to mend and fix the flower beds at the farmette. While Ed patiently works on repairing my car  (Ed, please be careful! That thing looks like it's about to roll on top of you! Mmmm, yes gorgeous...), I patiently repair the heat damage in the yard. Oh, I can't get it to be as it would have been without the endless blast of hot, hot air, but I can do a lot to make it feel abundantly lush again. Untamed, verdant. Like this:

So that it is once again a pleasure to walk up the brick path...

Or to step back and regard the whole farmhouse face on, in the last warm rays of the setting sun.

It's very late when we finally throw up the shovels, hoses and (in Ed's case) wrenches. Very late.