Thursday

Oh, the flowers of July! Soak up the sorrows of this world and keep our collective smile alive.

Here are my pink girls, fitting in with the yellow flowers that I planted so long ago that I don't even remember what they are.






Here's an unusual and beautiful day lily:






And here's the field of them, today:






Breakfast.






And now it's all about Snowdrop. She has gym class early in the morning and I'm there with her.

And yet... do I note that dance stretch creeping into the tumbles and climbs?






Ah, Snowdrop... I hope in life you do not have to carry the burdens of the world upon your head...






This is one of her favorite moments -- when she gets to play ball. (Soccer champ? Maybe...)






Afterwards, we go to Paul's coffee shop (right next door to the gym!) and I buy a batch of pickles and a cookie to be split between Snowdrop and Ed and I have to say, I am too lazy (tired?) to haul over a high chair, so I tell the little one to just stand in the big chair and eat. She obliges, though there's that look in her eyes that seems to ask  -- am I understanding this right? you want me to stand? Correct?







Okay. (Or, as Snowdrop says it -- okay okay okay!!) We go to the library next. Chaos. Some group of young ones is running wild. Snowdrop is not sure what to make of this. Neither am I. We don't stay long.

Back home, she has her bath and then we move to her play space. I put on a record. This child is no stranger to music, but the record player just mesmerizes her.






Here's something impressive: our mosquito population took a nosedive overnight. And so Snowdrop and I head outdoors to explore.

She is a bit tentative... Until I take her to our blueberry patch and let her taste the warm berries straight off the bush. She stuffs them into her mouth... So good!






The cheepers see us. They come running.






Stand back, girls. I'm trying to take a picture of the lilies in the heat of the day.






We retreat to the farmhouse where Snowdrop practices the set up for a somersault (expecting me to flip her over, and I do) again and again and again.






Lunch, nap -- it all moves so quickly. Here she is immediately after her nap with that look of sleep still in her little face...






I give her fat crayons and a piece of paper and, as an afterthought, a cup full of blueberries and all this amuses her no end: what's a girl to do with all this stuff??






(Focus on the blueberries.)





She goes home soon after.

Near evening at the farmhouse. Admire the day lilies, water some distant beds. Go out with Ed to the local market, talk to the cheese guy and, too, to the guy from Greece who sells his olive oil (come pick olives with us in January! Meh... I don't think so. Travel less, be here more...), eat dinner, admire the lilies...





The world is a troubled place. Finding peace is so very hard. But here, at the farmette, it isn't hard at all. So lucky to look out and view fields of flowers. So very lucky.

Wednesday

Time, when it's well spent, moves forward so very quickly! But I am not complaining. I remember days in my life when it dragged (when a daughter was sick, when someone wasn't home on time -- those eternities that you like to forget about, even as everyone has them and some have them far too often). And so these days of too few minutes are in my mind special. They speak of fewer problems and more productive outcomes. Ah, but that is should continue!

Ed, too, is exceptionally busy. I ask him if he likes that and as always, he shrugs his shoulders. It's fine -- he'll say. Would you prefer to have less to do? -- I'll push him. No.

Last night he worked so late that by the time he put his work to rest, it was nearly dawn and time to let the cheepers out. So I got the gift of staying in bed past the moment of sunrise!

Still, I wanted to water the front bed and so I did get up soon after. My garden photos are from this early, but not earliest of early, time frame.






Some of my favorite day lilies are blooming now (oh! is it fair to speak of favorites? it's the entirety!). Here are my trumpet girls!






And this year, I added a number of spider lilies. Aptly named!






I should explain why I never photograph the front bed. Yes, we worked hardest there this year. Yes, I planted and moved and established dozens and dozens of flowers. But it's a thin ribbon of a bed, right by the road and it doesn't lend itself to a good sweeping view. Even as I have to think that if you drive by it, you'll be in for a lovely treat. Here's a wee fragment, looking at it from behind.






I had been working in the beds for several hours, but it seemed like minutes. As I returned to the farmhouse, I was shocked to see that it was already 9:30. I was due at Snowdrop's soon!

Breakfast was less leisurely than usual. But both the blueberries and raspberries are from the garden (picked by us under great duress as these are the places you'll find way too many mosquitoes for comfort). Delicious.






Snowdrop is significantly more bouncy today! That's reason to smile!






She jiggles and teases and of course quickly removes the ribbon I put in her hair. Oh, Snowdrop!






(But I sneak it back in when she's distracted by a bit of an oatmeal raisin cookie.)






(Well, for a while.)






At home again, I watch as she stretches out her leg, this way and that. Is she destined to be a dancer, like her aunt? Or a yoga instructor?






And let me post three quick shots of a Snowdrop absorbed in her books, with the last one signaling that new search for a good (yoga?) pose.
















In the evening, I join Snowdrop and her mom for an outing downtown. We do what we've done for years now -- we walk to the Wednesday evening concerts on the square.

I did not imagine Snowdrop could be this happy with the event. Of course, the lawns on the square are quite full, so we move to the side. You could say we're in the peanut gallery.

But here, among families and kids and people who are only mildly tracking the music, we find a kind of peace and acceptance you'd be hardpressed to find closer to where the orchestra plays.

Snowdrop loves her low to the ground seat...






... her food, the sight of other children, grownups -- all that humanity out there, smiling, welcoming.

I have rarely seen the little girl this joyous (and she is a happy little girl in general).






Such a beautiful set of hours. Really, so very wonderful.

Tuesday

A post of few words but many lovely moments.

They did not begin until breakfast. Prior to it, the day was humid, dank and spattered with an occasional shower. (We had set up a thermometer to measure humidity in the basement and today's reading is dismayingly high.)

But breakfast is grand!






I notice the remains of a rain shower on a day lily.





And then, very quickly, I am off to Snowdrop's. The girl has been under the weather for a few days. I don't really use the camera much when she is in her more quiet moments, but as you can see, she had plenty of regular playful spells as well!






We take a walk, making it to the distant coffee shop...






And on the return, we pause at the lakefront. She insists on walking down toward the water. The little beach is empty. I can understand why. The water is no longer pristine and clear. Still, we find a spot where there is some visible sand and ever so daintily, she steps into the very warm lake.






Very quickly into the game she stumbles and topples into the water. I tell her it's okay, but she is a bit disappointed. It's all part of feeling just a little bit off.






She asks to go on the swing. I see the tiredness in her sweet sweet face.






Still, the girl is all spirit. At home, I rinse her off and change her to dry clothes. As always, she makes a real effort and if you didn't know her well, you'd never see that she isn't fully up to snuff.






In the late afternoon, I move on to my tasks and chores. Unlike Snowdrop, I am not feeling under the weather and yet I still manage to be a little off center. For example: I have a doc's appointment. Driving to it, I realize that I had forgotten to shed the slippers I wear at Snowdrop's home. I show up at the clinic wearing fluffy footwear in 90 degree weather. Honestly, I look like the nutty person who wears a bathrobe and curlers to the grocery store.

Next, at home, I chop off a bit of a finger while cutting onion for home made chili. Many bandages later, I finally get things under control.

So you could say that the stars were not aligned today. But I don't think that's entirely correct. Snowdrop, in the end, was all hugs and giggles. The chili turned out fine, despite my handicap (bandaged hand). And the flowers! Oh, the lovely flowers of July!

(Day lilies by the porch.)






Cheepers running to get some bread when I come home.






And then -- cheepers, following Ed back to the barn for a corn treat.






Finally, the ever magnificent flowers.






I always tell people I encounter during my travels that I live in a place that's extra cold in the winter and extra hot in the summer. We're in the full swing of the latter but we're starved for it. I don't know many who would complain.

Time to let go of this day. Tomorrow will offer a new range of scents and colors. We're in a sweet bubble of midsummer. How good is that!

mid-July

There's no question but that I plant a July garden. Oh, I love what comes before and I like what comes after, but when I check the flowering time of perennials, I'm most likely to succumb to picking ones that bloom in mid summer. I feel that this is the season's glory. It's what we think about when January rolls into February and the growing season seems so far away.

And so it is no surprise that I came back to a garden that is arguably at its peak.

Returning from the coop just before the sun jumps over the horizon, I pause to take it in.






The main largest bed that stretches from the sheep shed to the farmhouse always gets the most attention (and the huge new bed  by the road gets hardly any) because it's positioned in a splendid way and so the camera just naturally wants to shoot it all. But let me not neglect the side beds. The one to the west:





And the bed that was newly planted last year, to the side, by the other old willow. Here's a corner of it just as the sun comes out of hiding.






And, too, of course, the first bed that I planted here -- the one just by the porch. And I do want to spotlight an occasional day lily. My loyalty to this flower is unwavering.






Here's a whole bunch of them, right by the porch.






... where of course, we eat breakfast.






It is Monday and so Snowdrop comes over for the day. It has been a while since she has spent a whole day here and I can tell that specific memories come bouncing back to her. I say -- raspberries? -- and she immediately heads down to where she last picked them






I was concerned that the bugs would be too irksome, but in the heat of the day, they're subdued and we have a wonderful few minutes picking warm berries off the canes.






I tell her that the blueberries we had examined a few weeks back are now ripe as well. Here, she has to brave our neglect of the terrain around them and, too, she has to reach for the ones that are accessible outside the deer fencing, but she manages all this just fine.







Inside again, she spends a lot of time surveying her play space. So familiar, yet slightly new, too. Within a few minutes, she has taken it all in. Ed comes in and they do their usual.






She watches as he eats his lunch...






Hoping maybe for a handout...






And so I suggest that she eat hers and we do this on the porch, where the fan helps move the air around creating those gentle breezes of summer that are so very magical.

I do an experiment after her main meal. I give her a bowl of delicious, creamy frozen yogurt (which is rapidly becoming very unfrozen in the heat) and a bowl of just picked raspberries. Which does she gobble down?






Even when I coax her toward the sweet dessert, she turns away and reaches for the berries.

I make it more complicated. I add a bowl of other favorite fruits: Blueberries, strawberries, cherries.





And still she reaches for the fruit.

A girl after her own grandma!


In the late afternoon, we go back to her neighborhood and her mommy and I both take her out for a quick walk.To the coffee shop! Oh, the familiarity of it all!






And as always, she wants to walk back (rather than be pushed in a stroller). We indulge her.  She'll eventually change her mind. She understands us, we understand her.





Here we come, world!

It is so good to be home again!