feels like July

Another storm, another rain dump, followed by another hot and humid day, which of course will result in more storms, more rain. We've been stuck in this pattern for a while, but hey, it's July! It would be unusual not to have the heat, the storms, the humidity pay us a visit now. People think of Wisconsin as being very cold, and it is, come January. But summers are hot here. If you don't have AC, you're in trouble.

The flowers are having a good season, though the tall ones have given up and I have not yet bothered to pick them up after the last pounding rain. I'll wait until things have settled down a bit. Most of my garden work is still devoted to lily snipping and this morning I picked off 665 blooms. That may be this year's high. It felt like it! The bucket was heavy because they were saturated with water. It took a couple of hours to work my way through the flower fields!

Breakfast? On the porch, despite the heat. We turned on the fan! And we had croissants because we were dying to try them with the freshly made blueberry jam.

Verdict? Well, good, of course. Hard not to be good when you use such fantastic berries. But we both agreed that the strawberry jam had greater flavor intensity. Still, we sure have a lot of jam and a nice balance of blue and red fruits to last us... a very long time.

 

Monday is my day without kids and I like to use it wisely, but inevitably I get sucked into chores that pile up the rest of the week. Today was all about the car: it needed another body shop adjustment. I grumbled a little and perhaps to shut me up, I got one of their new cars to drive around. The thing is huge, and it does everything for you! Since when have we gotten to be so lazy that we cannot use a key, close the trunk or push a seat forward? Everything is done with a touch of a finger. In ten years, we wont have to walk to the car -- a long arm will reach for us and carry us to it!

So long as I am out and about, I do my grocery shopping for the week. This is when I get really nervous: I'm spending too much time on too many details that are forgettable, even as they take up lots of time. And so, when Ed proposes a walk in the park, I jump. And suggest we add a bike ride to it. And so this is our afternoon: in our favorite local county park. Among the prairie grasses and flowers.

Was it hot? Yes it was. Was it beautiful? Undeniably. 

And the day suddenly goes from being very ordinary to being so very fine!

with love...