Saturday, August 17, 2019

Saturday

It's summer, it's fall, it's really summer, it feels like maybe summer is nearing an end.

Ed and I both love seasonal change. True, the most anticipated and exhilarating changeover is the one that signals the coming of spring. But, it's also a time of frustration: spring never comes soon enough! You have plans, you have expectations and you find yourself waiting.

The change from summer to fall is more gentle. It's like taking your great aunt out for a walk, rather than playing tag with a ten year old. The rush is over. We take each day as they come, reveling in the feeling of lingering warmth, even as the idea of a crisper day doesn't seem bad at all.

[For some, the change to winter is the worst: these are the people who flee south. We're not among them. In the winter, the house is warm and there's always the hope for a beautiful snow cover.]

I'm still snipping lilies, but only in a couple of places are there any noticeable quantities of spent flowers. Like from these very tall girls: still going strong -- 40+ every day.



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Most of the others are now singles or at best doubles and struggling to make their presence known in the thickness of phloxes, heliopsis, rudbeckias, and monardas.


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A game for you: find the day lily in this picture!


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We do some weeding -- Ed along the path, me by the sheep shed, but it's a halfhearted effort on my part. So there are weeds. I'll deal with them next spring.

For me, this is the last unstructured day for a long long while. The young family is returning from a few days away by the big lake and we all now have just a short time to get ourselves ready for some more travel. But today, I'm still moving slowly, letting the hours unfold without once having to look at a clock. Having breakfast at noon seems just fine! Or is it even later? I note the passage of time only by the movement of the sun from one end of the porch to the other.


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Sometime late in the day, we bike over to the Disc Golf course once more and put in our 9 "holes" of disc throwing. Ed's improving so much that he wants to keep playing. Me, I like the barefoot walk across the course and the meager tosses of a disc that never seems to want to go far enough. No camera this time, but I do say hello for you to the cranes and pigs! And the three deer that crossed our path on the ride.

And in the evening, I check off a few more items from my big to do list, and I cook up a huge pot of chili (I can never take off on a trip without wanting to cook several meals for Ed, even as he laughs at my distrust of his solo eating habits), and finally we settle in on the couch for an evening of popcorn in front of some irrelevant movie.

And there you have it -- four days of a slower pace. Now let's rejoin the rest of humanity and get ourselves pumped up for what's ahead.