Tuesday

Happy happy June 21st! Love this long day, when our sun sets at 8:41 pm (and rises at 5:18 a.m.). So many hours of beautiful light! (15 hours and 23 minutes of it here in Madison Wisconsin.) I mean, hot. But bright!

We are well aware of today's expected heat. Ed is up before 6 in the morning, digging up courtyard soil and laying it under the willow where we hope to plant some nourishing grasses for the chickens. It's not a job you can easily do on the hottest day of the year, so he starts early.

In taking a break, he comes upstairs and tells me that the chickens are restless. They want to be out of the coop. Because it will be the first day out "in the wild" for the four new ones, we have to stay with them for a while and watch for signs of trouble. What trouble, you ask? Oh, the cats.

When the chicks are young, the cats are really tempted to chase them. At some point they cease and retreat. Full grown chickens are too threatening: cats steer clear of them. But that magic line that separates the hunted from ones you flee from is loosely drawn and we're not quite sure the new chickens are past the age of temptation. So we open the door of the coop and we watch. And a few of the cats watch too. And the swallows hate all this because quite suddenly there's a lot going on in the barn and their young ones have just hatched.

Still, we wait and watch for a good long hour until we are satisfied that everyone is safe.

So far so good.

I turn my attention to the flowers. The tubs and the newbies need to be watered again. Too much heat!

Breakfast is on the early side. While it's still not ridiculously sizzling out there.

Phew, what a day! I need more sleep and less heat. Possibly we all need that!

Once again, in the late morning I pick up Snowdrop at art class. We check in on the Bresse chicks. All good so far...

I would be a poor care giver today if I did not take Snowdrop to the pool. I mean, on the hottest of hot days? How could you not! 

For the first hour, I stayed with her in the pool. 

After playing around in the deeper water, she turned to me and asked -- Gaga, can you dive off the high board? (In truth, I would call it a medium board.)

And I thought to myself -- as you get older, you stop doing things. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. The strange things is, I sometimes have this dream about diving off a (medium) board. I suppose it's one of those unfinished business things. I never perfected a straight dive. In my dream as well, I keep trying, but it's never perfect. Good enough, but not perfect. And when was the last time I dove off a board? I couldn't possibly tell you. Fifty years ago seems right. 

Snowdrop's question stumped me. I'm nearly 70. The impulse is to say no, not any more. But she asked with such belief! The girl is not competitive. We talk about mutual interests, like writing and we conclude we are a team of writers! In swimming, she is not where she wants to be. Maybe what I can do for her is show confidence.

So I dive. 

And luckily I don't break my neck doing this and she is beaming and I am happy that I took that plunge. 

Evening calm. We survived the hot day and so did the new chickens. Putting them in the coop turns out to be a breeze. (It helps to do this in the evening when they're woozy. But if you wait too long, the predators reach them before we do. It's all a balancing act. Sort of like life itself.)

I bake a frittata with the tail end of this year's asparagus. With garlic scapes and local oyster mushrooms. Summer treasures. Yes, we are officially both feet into summer.

Happy Solstice!

With love.