Monday

Over breakfast, Ed and I have a Very Serious Discussion about tree branches.





I want to cut back the ones that hang low over our entryway.
Why?
We'll get a little light in, which will dry out the walkway and keep down the mosquitoes. (The nasty bugs haven't attacked us yet this year, but I have no doubt they'll be here soon.)
But look at all those lovely leaves! And the nuts!
We never see any of the nuts because the squirrels get to them first. You know that.

In the end, he agrees to climb up on the roof and do some minor trimming. And I mean minor. This then is our morning: mostly talk, little action.

...but with a very pleasant assessment of the garden, as admired on my numerous walks back and forth to the woodpile, where we tend to dispose of cut branches.

(The flowers by our parked cars.)






(I want the lilium to bloom this week, but the return of cool weather seems to have slowed these trumpets down a bit...)






One more morning task: throw these two hens off their roosts! Henny has been hanging out in the coop, Java in the garage. They're brooding -- meaning they've stopped laying and they sit without interruption on imagined eggs. Ed will pick them up once a day and plunk them down next to food and water so they wont grow weak. After a few minutes of pecking, they'll both return to their roosts.






It is a windy day and it is especially nippy when you venture out to the lakeside playground -- which is where Snowdrop wants to go after school. Well okay, just for a few minutes.

But for the little one, it's never "just for a few minutes..." On the upside, she does not object to a pony tail, at least here by the lake, where her hair is constantly blowing over her face.






A run to the life guard tower...






A climb up...






And then (aided by a tiny food bribe), I convince her that it is time to make our way back to the car.

At the farmette, I ask her if she'd like to take a flower walk in the front bed. For some reason, she loves this long stretch of perennials.






But there's another treat for her today -- the ripening raspberries.






She is never greedy. Just a few and she is content.






Once inside, she does remember a different pleasure: can I have some ice cream, gaga? I laugh. She laughs. You can really go back and forth with her like this for a while. She loves to laugh and even more -- to make others laugh.





This is a child's gift, no? The desire to engage in laughter. Oh, but that we could engage them all, those children of the world... without worry, without indifference.