I'm thinking of the clouds, the rains, the storms.
I'm also thinking of the two kitties -- Calico and Cutie, the sisters that keep being chased away by the teenage cats who call the farmette lands their home. (Cutie has actually been coming back daily for a feeding or two, but Calico has been gone for over a week. Every time I think she surely must be dead, she reappears, starving, thin, but happy to see me answer her incessant meows with a bowl of food.)
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And I'm thinking of the return of Snowdrop's pictures, which she stopped working on for a while.
But again, I am getting ahead of myself. The day starts very early. With animals.
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Some flower appreciation...
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(that's a close up of this...)
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And breakfast.
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The kids come immediately after and even though it is lightly drizzling when they arrive, I push for a quick nature walk -- to the barn and back. They love visiting the coop and the adventure is made more exciting by the fact that Ed joins us there.
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As we walk back to the farmhouse, the rain picks up, so we don't linger. And as I watch the two kids, I think to myself: who needs the other more? Your guess may be -- he does. Sparrow does everything Snowdrop does. She sits on a ball, he sits on a ball. She wants to go to art room, to read, to play with Legos -- he follows close behind.
And yet, I see in her a reliance on his presence that is touching. Even when she is pointing to his misstep -- gaga, he pushed me yesterday! -- she does it with an understanding that he is part of the family and the dynamics are complicated.
I have a hypothesis -- she tells me in the car and I smile at her choice of words. I think he pushed me because I had been wanting to do something alone and he was not happy about that.
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As I said, Snowdrop is inspired to go back to drawing. This comes after reading the sweet, sweet Catwings stories (she begged to read through all four books at one sitting, but I believe in deferred gratification! If I have to wait a day for the next episode in my Crime Dramas, she must sweat it out too!) where a family of cats has wings. Her pigs in her super-pig sketches have wings. She is on it again!
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It is the last day of the second week of Gaga's summer school and only now do I suggest to them a video after lunch. It's raining and I want them to have a bit of an easy moment. Olivia stories provide just that.
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In the evening, it rains. And storms. And rains some more. I stir fry some fish, go back to my asparagus, and settle in with Ed for a quiet and lovely evening on the couch.