By the Window

Bear with me.

I like these pictures of Bird reading comics so much that I'm posting all three. 

Three Views of the Last Peony

One.

Two.

Three.

I knew you'd be interested.  You're mighty welcome.

We Are the 1%

Millie on the phone with Owen family:

 

Annie and Lu in our outdoor gymnasium:

Wealth beyond measure.

Prepositional

Millie by the bush:

Millie on the ground:

Annie in a tree.

 

Don't Forget to Scrub Behind Your Ears

Millie and I have opposing goals for the summer.  Mine is to see how many layers of dirt my children can accumulate on their bodies before I'm forced to wash them.  One of Millie's oft-stated desires, on the other hand, was to scrub her daughter and clothing until they both were squeaky clean.

What very different views of the world we have.

 

Mission accomplished.

Then she hung the wardrobe on my garden fence, 

and made a royal pavilion for the nearly disintegrated royal lady.  Laura, you don't know how good you have it.  (And, remember, she's been in this state for a while...)

Avant-Garde

Here's how to create your own Art by copying Piper's proven technique.

Pluck roses from the wellhouse bush. Dunk them all in a bowl of water. Line them upside-down on the bathroom shelf.  Do this at least once a day until you've stripped the bush entirely.

Call it good.


  

Frankie, Or, a Girlhood Crush

I don't know about you, but I think it's scandalous for an eight-year old girl to write a note like this.  And it wasn't just any eight-year old girl, it was MY eight-year old!  I know.  Depressing.






What's that?!  Frankie's amphibious?  Wonderful!  She may write all the notes she pleases, then.

Doing the dance.

All three together, while the littlest ones sleep.

Here's the moving note of farewell I found on a 3x5 card later that night.

You no I love stripes.  You no I do.

 

You No I Love Stripes

She does, it's true, and she's always been this way.  My mom made her this sweater for her birthday, and she loves it enough to wear it on days in which bathing suits would be more appropriate.

Elephants, stripes, and pirates, oh my!  (It doesn't have the same great rhythm as lions and tigers and bears, but we make do.)

Her love of stripes is bound so deeply that even her eyes are striped.

 

Endless, Numbered Days

I let so many slip by without bothering to document them--dull days, bright days, holidays, hosting-days, and the best of them all, last October's ten-year milestone.

 As I loaded this picture, for some reason I thought of the morning nearly 11 years ago when John and I joined hands.

I am so glad we did.

And here's another, taken a few days ago when the other girls and I returned home late from a bonfire.

Boo Hoo, Or, I'm a Big, Fat, Whiney Baby

I had quite a few garden woes this year and didn't bury the last seeds in the ground until nearly a month later than I should have. Rain, rocks, more rain, more rocks, and this.

A brand-new tiller I borrowed from my parents broke in half. That's what you get when a tiller's constructed with inferior cast iron parts in place of steel, but at least it endured for 9 1/2 rows. That's 9 and 1/2 more rows than I'd ever been able to till in my gardening life.

My dad returned it for a full refund, and I was pitiful enough (seriously pitiful, as in sitting-in-the-dirt-wishing-I-could-cry-pitiful) that my Uncle David generously let us borrow his old and as sturdy as the hills tiller to complete the second half of the garden.  It worked beautifully, and even with the ridiculous amount of rock-hauling, I can't believe how much easier it was than breaking up every row of rocks with a shovel like usual.   What a blessing.  I'm eager for dump truck loads of compost hay, aged sawdust, or, in the best of all worlds, aged manure (hey, I can dream) to find their way to our garden so we can make the "need" for a tiller obsolete by building a thick layer of topsoil, but I'm fairly sure I'll have to exercise ingenuity in order for that to happen.  Anybody have some spare cleverness-- or, failing that, a dump truck-- just laying around collecting dust?  I’m running short on both.

Those of you who rely on gardens for summer feasting and, more importantly, winter sustenance share my hopes.   I'd love to harvest more than dirt and rocks from this space and hope for an unnaturally late frost this year.  When I took this picture, things looked less than promising, but check back in 2 months, and, Lord willing, I'll stuff your car full of zucchini.

Farm Fresh, Free-range, Organic Eggs 4 Sale (Donuts Extra)

My mom came to drop off our weekly free carbohydrates, and this hen weighed the options:

  

1.  Proceed carefully down the steps and get to the pile of donut crumbs after her fellow fowl gobbled them up 

OR

2.  Fine-tune her diving form.

She thought for a bit, 

steadied her nerves, 

calculated the free-fall distance, 

and then executed a flawless swan dive in the direction of the donuts.  She looked ridiculous, but I gave her a ten, anyway, because I admire and understand donut-driven courage.