Friday

Let's start with the flowers. I'm in a hurry and so I trim only a scant handful. Yet, I'm satisfied with the way the farmette fields present themselves right now. It could be that until the last bloom fades, I will always be satisfied. (The key is not to look at a bed with the same expectations as you may have had say in June.)






Breakfast. Ed is exhausted. Launching his machining project has been incredibly taxing, but he never complains. In all my years with him, I've never heard him grumble about anything. He just forges on.






I go over to be with Snowdrop and guess what? She wants to go outside. Right away. Forever and ever.






There's an unusual twist to this day, as I have a prearranged meet up with my closest of friends in town. Snowdrop is happy to find in her a kindred soul.






We spend a few good minutes on the playground before a rain sets in.







Towards evening, Snowdrop comes to the farmette. The place of yellows and golds, in my eyes.






The little one is delighted to see Ed as he returns from his weekly engineering meetings. She'll not know that he's had some trying times with his project. He would never impose that on her, on me, on anyone.






I make pizza, in part because I know Snowdrop loves both the process and the end result. Here, she's questioning the necessity of baking anything at all. The cheese was good, the marinara sauce? Superb straight out of the jar.






As the pizza bakes, I ask Ed why a mechanical toy of Snowdrop's has ceased to work. He fixes it for her and she insists on helping him with this job. Only now do I realize that this girl already has helped me weed her mommy's flower bed, helped me make the pizza, and now is hell bent on helping Ed fix her toy. (Ah-ah, use this screwdriver!)






After dinner, she again wants to be outside. I gently rub some miraculous ointment on her -- miraculous, in that it claims to be wonderfully natural, at the same time that it promises to keep all insects at a mile's radius away from you. Or some such nonsense. Ah well -- we haven't a terrible bug problem at the moment, thank goodness.

I tell her I want to deadhead some spent flowers. You wont be surprised to learn that she wants to help.

And she does help, pulling out stuff that... well, wont be hurt by her enthusiastic gardening tactics.






Snowdrop does not shy away from tough jobs.






That's the lesson for this day: kids are born with a desire to contribute. To do more than their fair share. To be independent and capable, humorous and kind. Oh, but to keep those impulses alive and going strong in all of them, in all of us!

We can but try.