Monday - 101st

This week has four deliveries slated for it: groceries today, asparagus tomorrow, mushrooms and peaches on Wednesday. I'm a little apprehensive about the groceries: it's a wet day. Plenty of clouds, rain, possibly storms.

I am lucky. There is a window of calm in the afternoon. The delivery is made just then. I bring in the groceries and begin the job of washing and sorting. I take out one sack of cherries. Nice. Snowdrop so loves cherries. This will keep her happy all week long. I look in the bag again. Wait, what's this? Another sack of cherries! And another! In all -- eight bags of cherries. Emptied into our big colander, it looks like this:






It's the first big delivery error since we've been in isolation and of course, we do get a refund (cherries are not cheap, so I am not surprised that 8 bags make up a big chunk of this week's grocery bill). But my oh my do we have the cherries! Is it time to bake??

The day is otherwise wet but beautiful. We have breakfast on the porch...






(the rooster's song is never ending...)


\



... and shortly after, the kids arrive for Gaga's Summer School.

We always begin with a nature walk and the wetness of everything doesn't change my mind. I was thinking I'd talk a little about the trees that grow here. Deciduous and the occasional conifers. But Snowdrop stops me short: Gaga, I know about deciduous trees.
I think back to a book we read a while back about this stuff. Does she remember it? I doubt it. She tells me -- I saw it on Sesame Street!

Sparrow is hesitant out there in the fields of tall, wet grasses, but Snowdrop ventures forward undaunted, to measure herself against a small conifer.






I watch and I think how good these "nature walks" are for me (and maybe for the kids)! I get to look at the more remote corners of the farmette again and it makes me happy that the kids find some ounce of pleasure there as well.






Inside, I ask them to paint a tree of choice. Sparrow is indifferent to the assignment, but Snowdrop does one, rejects it as inadequate, tries again. Somewhere in there, in a moment of frustration, she manages to paint her hair green, but who can tell!










There is so much exuberance in Snowdrop's play today, even as Sparrow is his more steady as a rock self. She dances, he does puzzles.










And after lunch, she nags me to bring out her "workbooks." She would stick with these a long time, but I'm to get these kids back home in time for Sparrow's nap. Besides, the little guy is too young for these books and it melts your heart to see him wistfully eyeing her materials.






And then it's late afternoon and I stare at a colander full of cherries.

Ed and I do fit in a bit of yard work in between the gusts of rain. Ed has found an efficient way to set up a "trellis" for growing peas and beans -- a set of poles, a chord between them and strings worked to the ground. We have had a good showing of sweet peas (as in the flower) this year, why not try again to sneak some climbing veggies into our garden? Maybe the cats have scared the bunnies and chipmunks away. Maybe we wont wake up one morning to find all our veggies nibbled down to the ground. And so he pounds in some posts and I prepare the soil underneath.

Dinner. Of leftovers. Followed by some cherries. And an evening stroll to the young orchard, where we discover that some of our trees are doing a modest but okay job at ripening some fruits. Which are the ones that are likely to yield a harvest this week? Why, cherries of course.

You cannot complain about anything when life keeps dumping cherries in your lap!