Sunday

Yes, lots of rain fell last night, yes, it's continuing to drizzle today -- a sustained, slow trickle. This is a perfect dose of water for the gardens. But clearly I was not as ready for it as I thought. At around 5 in the morning Ed nudges me -- I see you left out your tray of drying sour cherries outside...

Oh no!

Would you like me to bring it in? And he does bring it in: they're all swimming in water. I decide to ignore the whole mess and go back to sleep. He patiently drains them and puts them out on a fan. And later, when we are both up, he tells me -- I read from a U of Minnesota site that sun drying cherries up here doesn't work. Our air is too humid. They rot before they dry.

Well that's good news then! I shouldn't mind that mine got totally drenched in a heavy rain! Nonetheless, here they are now, drying once again, just without the sunshine. Ed's P.S. to the saga -- when I poured out the rain water, it was pink. I'm guessing a lot of the nutrients just swam right out then.

I love how stupid we I can be with our my projects!

The rain is very gentle when I do finally step out to survey the garden. The flowers are happy, yes, I'm sure of it, but the tall phlox stalks have fallen and many of the lilies are giving us their last blooms of the year. Still, I snip. Like Madame Defarge and her knitting in the Dickens novel, I snip through it all. Clip, snip, discard. 

The flower fields, even in this late stage of summer, still look mighty fine.

Breakfast, in the rain, on the porch.

In the late afternoon, I take a half cooked dinner to my daughter's house. They're still on a strange summer schedule where one is here, one is there, others are elsewhere and so Sunday dinners remain on hold. Sort of. For example, today we eat together, but at her place. With corn, of course. It's August, isn't it?

The older two have friends up the block and the minutes before and after dinner are spent outside, with kid bikes, trikes, balls and all the paraphernalia of summer outdoor play. 

(Sandpiper is too young to hang with them -- something that he finds terribly unfair.)

I leave them to their evening. 

At home, Ed is hoisting up the sagging peach tree. (It's loaded with fruit, even though it grows in a spot that is mostly shaded by crabs and boxelders. Go figure.) The cats are stretched out on the porch and in the sheep shed, the chickens are dozy-sleepy -- some on the barn wall, some in the coop. He picks off the ones on the wall and locks them up with the rest.

Let's make some popcorn.

We go inside.