farmhouse vacation, continued

Photos and numbers -- this is what you get on our last full day of Snowdrop's visit at the farmhouse.

First, breakfast: at eight, with Ed asleep, so just the two of us.






She steals three pieces of peach from my bowl.






On the way to school, we hail the cranes. So many cranes!






Sunshine, on her shoulders, makes me happy...






At the farmette: snipping lilies. It seems to me that the fields have so few blooms by now and yet I count 328 spent lilies in my bucket.






So few, yet so full of color!






The Great Bed, receding, but still gorgeous.






Breakfast, just the two of us, though a different twosome.






11:00 haircut, in the neighborhood of Snowdrop's school. As Lyndsy (the haircut person) massages my neck and temples, I'm thinking -- wow, this is so about me... weird... in a nice sort of way...
12:15 I'm at her school again.





She says she doesn't want the community pool (yesterday's punch still in her memory bank?). Just the wading tub on the farmhouse porch. Well okay, so maybe we should take the time to go to the playground first?

Gaga, I'm a bird!!






She wants to play picnic. But where's the picnic table? (It's been moved.)





Can I sit on that rock?
Well, okay, but it's no place to have a picnic...





How about that bench?
That'll work. 
A selfie!





And then she changes her mind: can we go to the big pool?
It's a good thing that I come prepared.





Spotted, after the pool, on our walk to the car: just one monarch butterfly. But what a beauty!





It's quite late by the time we pull into the farmette driveway. I slowly coax her toward her bedroom for a nap.

It's no use. She is up there for one hour, spinning stories that make me smile (I hear them on the monitor) again and again and then at 4:30, I finally go up and say -- you're done with your nap, aren't you?

She can't believe her luck and confirms again and again -- I'm done with my nap! (What nap?)

I know the price and I know the benefit: she will be a tad more fragile this evening, but she'll be ready to hit the sack early.

I try to keep it mellow.
Want to color?





But she really doesn't want to just color. She finds this apple that Ed picked. It's from our old orchard. Ed feels compelled to pick and eat a few each year.

Can I eat it?
Yes, but I don't like it. Ahah likes it, but I do not.
I like it too.
She eats most of it. I question her taste in apples.





They play. He tries to catch the headlines on TV, but they're so dismal today that perhaps it's just as well that she pulls him away.





I like to introduce her to different foods here, at the farmette, but today is her last night with us and so I offer something I know she loves with a passion: cheese tortellini in sun-dried tomato pesto.

She devours many.






Dessert. One-half of an ice cream sandwich, two pieces of watermelon. Heaven.






One last snuggle...





... one last book, one last hug.

Good night you sweet child... goodnight  good night to you all...