farmette vacation, continued

I fear there'll be scant scribblings today -- the day sizzled like the heat wave that's passing through and my time for writing wilted to a few sorry moments.

Sunrise from behind the crooked pine.






Continued love for the Japanese iris...











Breakfast, on the porch. Who'll finish the berries first?







Gym class drum roll!






Going up is easier than coming down.






Chase that ball!





From gym -- straight to the grocery store. We need to restock!

At the checkout, she wants to hit those credit card machine keys.
I comment -- we didn't have that issue with our kids when they were little.
Sales clerk responds -- that's right, no tempting keys to punch; just oven knobs to turn at home.






Groceries unpacked. Kid bathed. Ed reaches for the oatmeal raisin cookie purchased for him.
Can't I give her some? 
Oh, go ahead.






Lunch. On the porch. A yogurt for dessert.






Mmm, good!






Raspberries, straight from the bush.






I'll humor you and run to you, grandma, but it really is beastly hot!






Everything about this season, this day, this moment is beautiful!






And so we never stay indoors for long. Cool off, go out. Again and again.

I do try to fit in a few gardening tasks. The pots and some of the newly planted flowers need water. Snowdrop chooses to watch the action from inside the wagon.











She has been so cooperative, so willing to go along with most everything I put before her that I think it's a good moment for a small indulgence -- a Greek yogurt strawberry ice cream bar. Licking a cone had stumped her in Paris. But that was a month ago. 
Lick it, Snowdrop!
She does.
Bliss.











It required a hose down, but it's worth it. (We finish the fine details of a clean up in the farmhouse kitchen sink.)






For dinner, I reach for what her mom tells me is a favorite recipe: roasted pepper and artichoke lasagna.
I learn this about the little one: she really loves roasted red peppers. I would not have picked that as a toddler favorite. Ice cream bars, corn on the cob, even raspberries off the bush -- yes. But roasted red peppers? With artichokes?





 She eats with complete enthusiasm.

I had been putting her to bed just before 8, but tonight -- her last night at the farmhouse -- I want to have her up until it is nearly dark. I wonder if her good spirits will last that long.

They do last.

You could say that I tie a bunch of loose ribbons for her tonight. Maybe it's out of my own desire for continuity and completeness and I'm sure many of you will find it all rather mawkishly sentimental, but here's the deal: it happens that when I was a little girl, I loved the hokey Haley Mills movies, especially Summer Magic. The story there defies rational explanation and the themes that run through it are brutally sexist and possibly a lot of other isms can be found in the subtext, but I loved it as a kid and the music stayed with me all my life.

So much so, that I have taken to singing two of the songs from it every single time Snowdrop and I go out for a stroller walk. She knows them too well and since one refers to front porches and people sitting on them and watching fireflies in the night sky, I use the opportunity to show her the many front porches along our walk, all with chairs and benches (though never with people on them and of course, it's always daytime, so no fireflies).

Too, one of Snowdrop's very favorite books is the Lonely Firefly.

And so for our last night with her here at the farmhouse, I put on the DVD of this most awful and once awfully beloved movie, fast forwarding to the Front Porch song. We snuggle on a blanket and she is wide eyed with amazement as Burl Ives strums and sings. You mean someone else knows gaga's song??? (Did I mention that currently, she calls me gaga?)

Then we read the Firefly book.

And then we go out, she in her red wagon. It is dark, or dark enough. The fireflies are out over the fields, doing their communal dance and the girl uses her newly acquired from gym class word again and again -- whoa! whoa! As in -- that's just awesome!

And it is awesome. And I'll leave you with that, because it just can't be topped.