Forget the prognosis of a heat wave. Not happening. Not this week, anyway. It's nippier today than it was yesterday and the sun has retreated, perhaps embarrassed by its repeated absence this May. On the upside, Millie slept in this morning, for once not feeling overly warm in her crate upstairs. Up at 6:45! Lovely.
This morning, I didn't even open the porch door broadly. Just a crack to refresh the air inside. During the one minute of sunshine. Millie barked, possibly because she would have liked taking her usual prowl in between the plants. Or maybe because she found the presence of a tomato plant so close to the house offensive. (There to ward of the night chill.)
Breakfast inside. Note the two vases with farmette irises. A plant person will recognize that the one on the left is a bearded iris and the one on the right is a siberian iris. I have to say, I am enjoying bringing some of these guys indoors. Ed doesn't mind (or notice) and I feel the warmth of farmette blooms here, at Sally's House.
What next? Well, every day has in it some form of preparation for my three big events that will take place between May 30th and July 3rd. Never mind such small potatoes as two kids birthdays, end of their school year, help with weeding at the farmette, never mind even smaller potatoes, like keeping track of Millie's food supply and texting with the fence installers at Steffi's House. Those go by the wayside (well, not the kid birthdays -- but I've prepped for those already), because my focus is so much on the big three items. In chronological order -- the planting of the new flower bed at Steffi's House (weekend of May 30th), the family trip (it's a two weeker and it has many many moving parts to it), and finally the move to what I hope may be my permanent home (that's set for the first two or three days of July).
Each one of these is a huge project, and I mean HUGE! I still have to imagine the placement of 60 plants (how many times can I use the Scarlett O'Hara line?). Tomorrow, I'm going to review the border of the new beds. But that's trivial. The issue of what goes where is not for the faint at heart.
And the trip? That's even a bigger event and planning for it began for me in December. Wait, that's wrong -- it started last August when I made the first bookings. Eleven of us are going together and I'm in charge. Of everything. Yes, I have some help from my younger daughter, but ultimately the buck stops here, at my front door. It takes me back to the days when I planned travel for a group of randomly selected people, having set up the website (long since shut down) Field to Table, back in 2001. That was tense. I did two trips -- one with people known to me (to Alsace and Paris) and one with strangers (to Provence and Paris). You may be surprised to learn that the one with strangers was easier, because I knew nothing of their personalities and inclinations prior to our travels. Had I any idea, I would have been terrified. The people who signed up for it had nothing in common. I still don't know how I pulled it off! Organizer, driver, guide -- I did it all. In the hilly terrain of Provence, France. I'll not easily forget our second day in Avignon when I went to pick up the van I was to use for shuttling everyone all over the region. I realized it would fit the passengers, but there was no room for all their suitcases. Lucky me -- the rental company agreed to remove one of the seats in the back of the van, if I found a place to store it for a week. Yep, I found a place to store it for a week.
This June trip will have 11 people traveling together, with additional bodies thrown in at various points. One meal, for example, will have 32 people at the table. Another? just 7. Yet another? 15. And the rest? Mostly 11.
Older and wiser, I relegated what little driving there is to transport companies that supply a van and a driver. But the rest? I'm still working through the details, made harder because I know what these people like, and I know the weaknesses (and the strengths of course) of each traveler. There is some overlap and some divergence. And still, I want everyone to love it all, and I want there to be adventures, and I want those two to be not mutually exclusive.
But please think about the complexities involved! Because I surely think about them now as we get nearer to the date of departure.
Then comes the third item: the move. Uff! On the one hand, isn't it the same stuff that got moved to Sally's House in February? Well no, it isn't. For one thing, I have all those porch plants, an extra couch, a bench for the garden. And I have Millie who is way more fragile than stoic Henry ever was. I do have Ed to help with some of the transport, and I have movers to help with much of the stuff, but coordination is key here, especially since the person moving OUT of Steffi's House is an enigma: no one has seen hide nor hair of him and he has been unresponsive to texts and messages from those who manage the rental of the premises. I would not be surprised if I moved into a building that had a meth lab in the basement. I mean, who knows what's going on there -- all the shades have been pulled down for two years now and the neighbors report no movement in or out.
So, when I write here that I had a quiet morning after breakfast here at Sally's House, I don't really mean quiet. I mean, my head spins in all directions, and lists are made, and plans are drawn and then changed and then adjusted once more.
(Millie, in her more independent moment, found a way to watch the action outside...)
Eventually, I give Millie her daily brushing -- a ritual that I love and she does not mind...
... then pack her up and drop her at doggie day care. From there, coffee, and off I go to do the round of kid pickups.
It's market day locally and we make a stop there first. Ed is there, waiting. You can tell it's cold -- Ed's wearing his one an only jacket and Snowdrop asks to borrow my fleece.
Sparrow is pretty cold, but he wont admit it. I had told him to take his jacket.
("no Millie, you cannot have even a crumb of my brownie...")
("no Millie, you cannot have any of my cookie...")
From there, to Sally's House.
A quick exhale and a short reading session and then they go home and I'm left with just Millie.
My evening is now always my quiet time. I write, edit photos, watch a show, and push bedtime to indecently late hours, because I treasure these hours so much. Millie usually falls asleep around 9. I no longer have to watch out for naughtiness then. (I watched a documentary on dogs yesterday and learned that apparently something like 70% of dogs have ADHD, compared to 15% of American people; Millie is just a puppy, but it would not shock me to learn that she has some of that jitter in her.) I lose myself then in some detail of a project, or in my reading, or in a text exchange. The pace of life will accelerate at the end of the month. And it will not slow down, not even for a minute, until the 4th of July. But tonight, all is quiet.
with so much love...
