Wednesday

I have come to really like the arrival of the UPS truck. We don't get many deliveries, but when one comes, and the weather is superb (this would describe today), the delivery guy virtually bounces it over to our back door and he always has a nice word to say about life, about sunshine, and today about my flowers. Think how energetic you have to be to carry boxes over to people's doorsteps with a sprightly step! And then to mentally focus on your surroundings. And engage the recipient who is sitting comfortably on the porch in some pleasantry. Very energetic.

He's young and looks sort of bookish what with those eyeglass frames that you'd normally find in a movie parodying geeks and nerds. And he has kindness in his heart.

But, but, why was I sitting comfortably on the porch in the first place, instead of working in the fields or hiking with Ed in our local county park? 

Well now, I had work to do. The kind of work that makes me wonder how this would get done by those who actually have a real job, to say nothing of a family and a real job. The "work" consisted of sending my camera and my lens in for repair. It's full time work.

I've had enough cameras under warranty and in need of repair in my life that I know how tough it is to get them off to the shop. A once a year ordeal for me. You have to work through many phone calls and get many approvals and then of course you have to print out the paperwork, pack it up, realize that you left out one crucial piece of paper, repack the whole thing and ship it off. And today I had to do this twice: one shipment with the camera and another with the lens, purchased at a different time, so it is still under a different warranty.

I try to be very gentle with my cameras. To baby them. But the fact is, when I step out in the morning to snip lilies and feed the animals, that heavy camera is always, always dangling from a cross strap over my shoulder. So it gets to bounce and see quite a lot of the world. Every single day. And the time always comes when the shutter release sticks or the screen stops functioning or I hear grit in the lens or some such nonsense, requiring the long and tedious process of sending it in for repair. 

I was going to gripe about all this to Ed, especially when one of the insurance agents started giving me a rough time about model numbers that dont really exist, but then I thought my day could be a lot worse than sitting on the porch, looking out at the flower fields, and eventually greeting the very congenial UPS delivery person. 

But honestly, if you ask me about today, I have to say it was rather limited in scope: animals, flowers, the camera, the lens, and the UPS person.

I do have photos of the flower fields and I'm signaling this now: they are like Wisconsin blueberries -- nearing the end of their ripening season. Though my snipped lily count today was a pretty high 588 still, I see that this day's flowers are still majestic, but some of the stalks have nearly run through all of their unopened buds. They are done. So, we have had our grand peak lily week. In a few days we'll have settled down to simply having nice flowers scattered here and there but certainly not everywhere.

Okay, but today's show is still so very grand:

(Bold Beatrice is getting bolder: she's here on the secret path to remind me I should be throwing out the corn for them, not snipping spent lily heads.)

(I like planting lilies against a backdrop of phloxes, though this year the phloxes have really gotten to  be really, really tall!)

(Nymphs and shepherds, still going strong!)

(From the porch, looking out)

I have two anchor lilies in the corners of the big bed. These are nearly their last days of flowering.

(One to the north east...)

(One to the north west...)

Okay, okay cheepers! Your grub. (A rare sight where all nine are together...)

(And breakfast. Unusually big today. Pretty much the last really delightful thing I had on the books for this day!)

Oh, but I am done with camera mailing (and using my backup little guy for a good while going forward). And that is such a good thing!