Wednesday

Many thanks for your comments (yesterday) and emails. Hearing from you is always very very cool!

Let's do a quiet day today, shall we? To settle that buzz in our heads when we think too hard and worry too much.

I want to show you the shift in the garden: from the summer deliberate, to the autumnal crazy beautiful.






Occasionally, a flower will rally and put forth an extraordinary second bloom. This delphinium gives us the truest blue you're likely to find in any garden.






Cheeper update: only Henny (in the background) is giving us eggs. One green one, everyday. Java (in the forefront) is no longer brooding, but nor is she laying. She just is: her clunky lovely self. Scotch -- who knows what her game plan is. She no longer fights with the other girls, so that's a good thing.






Breakfast on a hot muggy September morning.






Late morning walk with Ed in our local county park. If you doubt the beauty of the midwestern prairie, this is the time to walk trails that push through these grasses and flowers.






And the music! Oh, the music!






Were I a painter, this would be my canvas:






Motorbiking home, we pass the fields of gold: soy gold. Corn gold.






The truck farmer fields to the east of us...






Picking up Snowdrop at school...






She is pushing "her babies" in the swing.






But she is a tired girl. No nap again in school. It shows.





So tired, that she falls asleep in the stroller, on leaving the playground.

At the farmhouse, happy again.





And of course, no matter what new stuff I introduce, she always comes back to her favorite: serving ice cream and cakes to her babies, to gaga, to ahah.






And now, as storms rumble but do nothing to push away the heat, the humidity, I reheat bowls of homemade chili and offer some quiet time for us, for you...