Friday

 Good morning, world!

Can I just note this one tiny little thing: I am okay with being done with lilies, snipping and all. I'm okay with moving on to pre-fall golds and phloxy purples. I'm okay with starting the day differently. Clearing spent flowers is peaceful, meditative, pleasant, but by August it also feels like I ought to be done. 

But this year, more than any other year, we have ourselves a prolonged bloom. Not only a July of lilies, but a summer of lilies. Every day, I am still picking up a bucket of spent flowers. And every day beautiful new ones come onto the scene,

It's incredible that the nymphs and shepherds are still going strong. Oh, sure -- I can count. In a few days all the buds will have bloomed, but still, in August? So many upright lilies? Amazing.

And really beautiful.

But such relentless beauty comes at a price. Every day I begin my morning with several hours in the flower fields.

Followed by an exhale, at the breakfast table.

And afterwards? Well, I was remembering what my doc had said to me yesterday: when you have a medical issue, say a prolonged cough or some such complaint, there's usually more than one cause behind it. And if you want to get rid of whatever it is that's offending you, then you have to work at all the causes.

Closing the rings on my watch (meaning being consistent with brisk movement) is something that is vital to good health and so at noon, even though it's pretty toasty out there, I suggest to Ed that we take a walk in our local county park. I didn't have time to do this later in the day. Now or never.

And it is, in fact, a lovely time to be in the park. Without many mosquitoes this year, we can take the time admiring the prairie flowers...

... and the mighty oaks...

I always photograph this bit of path when we ski here in the winter. What a difference a few months makes!

So, so pretty!

And immediately after, I rush to Snowdrop's Theater Camp. The kids are putting on mini demonstrations of what they had been working on...

Oh, this puts me back to years of watching my own two do their various artsy performances -- acting, singing, dancing, playing instruments -- they did it all and now, her I am, that grandma in the audience that just cant get enough of her grandkids!'

From there, we come back to the farmette.

(She claims the scent of true lilies is powerful! She is correct in this.)

... where she asks me to read out loud to her And I do -- a whole book, and I'm reminded that people who lecture in their youth and read out loud for hours on end in their senior years do indeed benefit from getting voice therapy. In the alternative, they drink lots of hot tea. 

Back home  -- the brothers.

How does a day pass by so quickly? And how is it that cherries take so long to dry in the sun? Imponderable questions! Deliciously inconsequential.

With love...