hot Saturday

You may read this variously. For example -- hot Saturday! what was she up to?? But I mean nothing more than to say that for once, the day felt very warm, from beginning 'til end. As it should be on a weekend in mid-August.

The garden suddenly feels dry. Oh, I've been spot watering places that seem to especially need it, but in a way, I've given up. It's maintenance work, but it's not going to make it feel lush anymore. Many of the flowers surely feel robust, but things are drying around the edges.





For our animals, it's too warm. Oreo's tail is drooping.






Isis walks up the farmhouse path cautiously, always with an eye toward the cheepers, wanting to be inside now, where it's cooler (and where there are no cheepers). Flowers with red or orange in them dominate.





Breakfast feels pleasantly warm. I picked the last of the strawberries -- you see them in the little dish. They deserve special mention because we had so few this year! (Thanks, chipmunks.)






I have a date to walk to the farmers market with my pregnant daughter (nearly halfway toward the birth day!) and I decide to push myself a bit more and bike to her place. Not far -- just six miles if I take the bike path, past our neighboring farmers...






...and prairie fields.






And of course, by the time I arrive at her home, I am hot. I pause at her place, refreshed by a glass of cold water and a quick visit with the two new adoptees.






(She reminds me that their older cat needs a photos as well!)






And then we set out. Lakeside walk, very very pretty now in August -- calling forth memories of this spring, when the ice cover refused to melt.






And of course, the market: full of the flowers that my girl especially likes. None of this tame pink white blue and yellow that I so associate with May. We're talking vibrant ruby red, purple and gold!






Walk back, bike home. Lunch on the porch. Water the big flower bed. Very warm.

So you'd think that this would be enough, right? Needed movement checked off. Photos taken, flowers admired and tended. But no! It turns out in life that the more you move, the more you want to move some more, so I coax Ed into a game of tennis (it doesn't take much -- we both love to play) and that, too, is very warm. Delightfully so.

Supper foods for a warm summer evening (and I say warm, because it's not so hot that we feel the need for air conditioning)? Oh, nothing special at all. A chicken brat day with lots of market corn. I never feel like fussing in the kitchen on a day like this.

Oh, but I do love these summer days! So very much!