a good day to sit back

Wet, gray, too cool for a July morning. No matter: sweatshirt on, bucket in hand. I snip lilies.

The number is going down. Yay. 401 today. By the end of the month, I no longer will feel compelled to clean the beds every single morning: the lily heads can fall off, slowly. Every once in a while I'll help them, but mostly, I'll be done. April, May, June, July. Months of work. The rest of the summer? Well, there's a lot more to summer than just snipping lilies and pulling weeds!

Today's garden:

 

 

(today's froggie)

(today's glads)

Today's breakfast:

And then I settle in to do some reading. I'll share one article, from the NYTimes. This one. Seemingly about the Olympic games in Paris (they begin this Friday), it really caught me by surprise (though perhaps it shouldn't have, as it was written by the paper's Paris Bureau Chief): it speaks of a Paris that I know and love. It describes a city in the way that I would describe it. I have been asked more often than I can count -- why do I always go to Paris? What's the draw for these repeat visits, most of them alone? Typically I brush off the question with some platitudes and rehearsed lines, finding it too hard to explain in just two or three sentences. As I read the NYT article this morning, I smiled: he said it for me! This is why!

And then I go back into the flowers fields. A friend stopped by and wanted a tour. And she was properly enthralled and I thought -- maybe I dont do this just for myself. Maybe it really is worth the effort. Maybe I can keep on doing this, correcting it as I go along.

(I show her my secret path spot. I think it gives the best view of many fields at once! I photograph it frequently, though I can never get its full glory into one shot.)

And now it's time to pick up Sparrow (his sister has another commitment this afternoon).

Sparrow is not a boy who would be raring to go someplace after school. At the same time, he often looks to his older sister to set the tone for an afternoon at the farmhouse. In thinking about what special activity I may offer him, in the end I defaulted to his same favorites: building, story telling, art. I'd have added number stories (numbers thrill him, they really do), but in the end I let that one slide, substituting it with a trip to the ice cream store. I mean, if you want to make the little guy really happy, vanilla ice cream in a waffle cone and a box of dominoes is the way to go!

Add to it permission to pick flowers. All the grandkids love to pick flowers for reasons that are unclear to me. It's not that they want to put them in a vase to admire once inside. They just like to pick them.

Evening: Ed bikes, I collect my thoughts. It's good to do that, particularly when you have a string of packed days. It's too easy to just rush into your next project and the one after. Maybe just a few minute pause to think through the best moments. There are so many!  Review, smile, then move on to what's ahead. 

with love...