flowers and buckets and tennis balls

Could I interest you in a photo of one of the flower pots by the walkway?





Because it's getting to be awfully colorless out in the garden otherwise. Especially when, this morning, Ed threw down a bit of roof and chopped off all the remaining blooms of the ever faithful phlox.

Sorry! -- he tells me, though really, he owes no apology. He's doing the impossible. There will be flower casualties.  It can't be avoided.

I pass him the next tool and he continues to tear down the roof.






Friday was my usual combination work (at home) and shop (in three separate grocery stores, because that's how complicated it is to bring good foods at optimal prices to the table). And work some more.


Could I also interest you in a photo of the prairies along one of the roads into town?






Back at the farmette, it's getting very fall-like. The grape vine, growing up and around the sheep shed, has its bunches ready for harvest. We'll be having grape jam along with the apple and peach varieties already put aside for the winter.






Late in the evening I am finally able to shake off the tensions of the week: we ride out to our secluded tennis courts -- the ones with pines on three sides, sending billows of scented air every time you take a deep breath. In the dozens and dozens of times we've played on these cracked courts with the somewhat sagging nets, only twice did we have company on the companion court. For us, playing in seclusion is almost the best part. We get lost in that small world of pines and flying balls and the world seems like such a good and noble place.

Your game is so good now! -- he tells me. That's an exaggeration, but still, I'm glad. I hated that he had to play down to my level for all these years.


And the next morning it really is cool again, but I just cannot give up that morning breakfast on the porch and so I take it all out  -- the flowers, the fruits, the favorite cereals...





...and we linger, despite the fact that it's in the fifties, like the people who refuse to see that the days have moved on. What flowers remain are carefully picked out of a bed that has precious few left.

Can I interest you in a photo of the morning vase -- with mint and lavender and nasturtium?