Slowly, I am returning to a summer routine. Lots of work outside, kids in my afternoon, little tasks, but also little pleasures sprinkled throughout.
The weather is still perfect, the mosquitoes are low in number in the morning, medium in the afternoon and evening. That may not be great for those who come around later, but for me, it's great. My work in the flower fields is almost always heavily concentrated to the mornings. Today's images from my weeding and pruning:
(lilies that don't recognize the end of the lily season)
(the new orchard: apples and a flowering meadow...)
(the six girls)
(oh, hello more lilies)
(pathway to the door)
And I return to the bakery to pick up breakfast treats and cookies for Sparrow.
After breakfast, Ed is preoccupied with work calls and I do not want to devote the rest of my living days to weed pulling, so I head out for a walk. Just along the bike path which weaves to the back of the farmette lands. I've always loved looking at the "rear end" of the farmette -- there's something gloriously wild about it since you dont see any of the structures in the season of dense foliage.
I dont often worry about how long I will keep on living there or whether Ed will lose the strength that we need to keep the place going (mine is less important: I can always let go of gardening, allowing the flower fields to sink into some dense jungle of weeds. It would be painful to watch, but we would survive, whereas without his engineering knowhow and physical stamina, we would not thrive there for long. All this is not usually on my mind. I've always believed that if we, if I had to take a radical turn in life, I would manage. But in the meantime, I remind myself that I cannot take all this for granted. It's easy to just accept waking up to a farmette day, to look outside and see all that is expansive and beautiful, seasonally exciting, to feel the calm, to believe that it will forever be this way.
And maybe it will be and maybe it wont. But for each day that is exactly like this one, we really are grateful. And I suppose ignoring the possibility (indeed, likelihood) of change in the coming years is a good way to live with affection for the present. I need only look to my mother to know that you can snuff out and destroy all seeds of joy if you're sure nothing good will ever come your way again. Her favorite home has always, always been the one she just left behind. And so I remind myself each day -- this is what good luck looks like. This field of golden and purple flowers, this porch breakfast, this walk on a brilliant late summer day.
After, I get ready for the kids. Fruits in their fruit bowls, cookie for the cookie guy, a croissant split between them.
I'm at their pick up point on the nose at 2:15. And I ask them: should we get corn at Stoneman's today and get ice cream tomorrow, or the other way around?
Guess which of two won for this day?
(she loves the friendly cat at Stoneman's)
(he likes to feed Rosie the goat)
(Boo the sheep is not hungry)
(at the farmette now...)
(cherry doubles...)
Surely what you'd recognize as a fantastic day. An noble day. Weeds pulled, steps taken, kids fed and happy. Summer at her best.
