golden path

You have to keep up the fight against bad news. Or at least you have to find that golden path that lets you keep the spirit despite the small and large punches. Your health, your friends' health, admired people's health -- those punches are constant. Then there's that smaller smorgasbord of hits: punches landing right in your garden. Today, for example, Ed found the first tell tale signs of a tomato blight. He lost a crop to it last year. We moved the planting area, we took precautions. The plants are robust and thriving. Millions of tomatoes, ready to grow and ripen. And then boom! The spotted leaf shows up, at first just one, and before long, I expect they will all wither and the plants will keel over. So you get these knocks, and you hear other people's sad stories, really sad stories and you want to do something but of course all you can do is stay on a golden path of gratitude for all that's not wrong with your loved ones, your friends, your gardens.

My golden path this morning is through the flower fields. Maybe its magic will rub off here, on Ocean. Want to give it a try? Tag along!

(Ah, this really is a path -- a "secret" one that the kids use to get to the farmhouse door)

(Almost all the lilies here were planted a year ago so this is their first year of full bloom)

Another place of lily magic -- the Big Bed. With a big true lily stealing the spotlight right now.

Yet another -- the bed near the parking spaces. Again, true lily to the left, day lily to the right. Clematis in the back, tying it all together.

When I first moved here, there were many, many raspberry bushes, growing everywhere. Once the shade of the big trees took hold, they stopped producing and so I mowed them down. Still, pockets of raspberries remain and we always get a few handfuls of the lovely fruit.

Breakfast, with peaches from our favorite peach farm (Dickey's).

Oh, here's another calming device: bake the Best Ever blueberry muffins! It's the season for blueberries and ours, here in Wisconsin, are fabulous! Really fabulous. So, out comes the mixing bowl and within a short hour I have these:

In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop from Invention Camp. We know nothing about this program except that one of her school friends wanted to do it with her and so excitedly, she set off. Her report this afternoon? It was great. (This has been her report from every program she has attended this summer.)

(car snack between activities)

I have her eat something and then we go to her tennis lesson -- it was on hold because of various trips and holidays, but now she's hitting those balls again. (Well, first she insists on a few minutes on the nearby playground. We're early.)

And after? Softball. All under beautiful summer skies.

As for her two brothers -- I see Sandpiper fleetingly, but honestly, it's not a week where I will see much of them at all. Our schedules are complicated! It's a good thing we haven't yet totally forgotten who picks up whom at what time and where. Well, maybe we did that once. Everyone survived!

With love...