Summer-aking

Waking to the sun on the wall and the sounds of the birds instead of the alarm clock…

Raking the dead leaves from the winterized pool…

Making an organized mess on my kitchen counter…

Baking a very easy 5 ingredient chicken dish…

Staking tomatoes and cucumbers…

Taking a break to post an update…

These guys?

Belly-aching, looking forward to partaking of the worms their parents bring them.  They’re doing fine.  Can’t believe how fast they grow. (But unless you’re a baby bird, too young to fly, it’s actually a bad week for birds around here… too many have hit the windows the last couple of days.  I cradled a beautiful young woodpecker into a plastic bag grave. Very sad.)

And make no mistaking, the work isn’t done so off I go for a few more hours.

And tonight, I’ll be aching…

It’s a good ache… a summer’s here, company’s coming, bed will feel good tonight ache.

Can you tell I love summer break?

 

Mother’s Day Week

Another boatload of photos all in one.  I’m trying to make it easier on you, though, so you don’t have to scroll through them.

Good, good week.  The babies hatched.  The mama is a little more tolerant of my camera.  She even posed for a while before dropping down on top of her sweet, helpless babes.  The papa swings by with worms quite often.  He’s a good dad.

The hummingbirds keep coming.  They are happy to take longer sips since I moved their feeder to the drive through lane on the outside of the patio area.  They can buzz through for a quick drink and be on their way.

The garden fence by the back door wasn’t cutting it for me this year.  Mr. Bunny had chewed too many holes in it and I’m liking the compact raised beds too much to mess with a big area. I’m hoping the little block pathways will make it easier to maintain.  I might have a real herb garden someday in the near future!

Mother’s day… ’twas very perfect.  The weather forecasters called for a “dreary” day.  Thankfully, it was anything but dreary.  And, I got to have a surprise Sunday lunch with all my kids when I didn’t think that was going to be possible this year.  And then LaRon made another rhubarb custard, probably the last of the season from the looks of the rhubarb stems.  He and I went bird bath shopping, since that was my wish for this year and we added two of those beautiful pink hydrangeas to the list.

Mornings and evenings in the back yard are just lovely this week. Perfect temperatures.  Fragrant breezes.  Birds galore.  So many flowers blooming right now.  And no mosquitoes yet!

Whatever this week is having, I’ll have it all summer long, thank you!  And “summer” starts today… the last day of school.

I’ll just brag a little on my kids… one is graduating next week with an honors diploma (though there were some tense moments over a math test this last week), one carries a 4.0 and is headed into his senior year, and one did the stage walk five times last week at the awards assembly ushering her firmly into her high school career.  Sigh… feeling a lot like that proud mama bird up there… and a little anxious, too.

All in an afternoon

To clean the garage was on yesterday’s list.

That involved putting out the last of the patio furniture and remembering that I had put one chair away with a rip in the seat in the fall.  The dilemma… keep this set we picked up for free three years ago and figure out how to replace the slings or build a new picnic table.  The garage somehow was forgotten and I ended up at JoAnn Fabric looking at outdoor canvas.   To tell you the truth, I wanted an excuse to build something new but I couldn’t help but get excited about the fun fabrics.  Before nightfall, I had four chairs redone, with hopes that they will last for more than one season.  I’m very happy with how these four turned out but I have two left to replace and if I had started with the green chairs I would have scrapped the whole project.  They came apart with much more difficulty and I’m still dubious about how they will go back together.

Today’s job… finish the green ones.

Oh, and clean the garage.

Wednesday Ketchup

It’s becoming a habit… compiling too many photographs in one post.  The pace for the summer may be set, though, be forewarned.  So this is me, playing catch-up, or perhaps it’s more like stew.

And this is me two evenings this week…

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Late afternoon sun on my shoulders, scanning the eastern sky for a rainbow.  Tonight’s was brief and by the time I found the camera it had already melted into the clouds.  Two days ago I caught a faint one after a deluge of unexpected rain.

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That wasn’t the only sky event to bring me out of doors this week… I waited until 11 pm this night to see what I could capture of the legendary supermoon.  Two separate photos are combined here, one of the moon itself and one of the glow.

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Mama robin has hung tight throughout the storms.  Crazy bird… her nest blew away twice before she got it built.  Somehow it has managed to survive there through several winds and rains.

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I brought the ladder in to sneak a peek from the inside.

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She had some pretty strong opinions about that.

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I’ll let you know how those little eggs fare.

At any given time there will be four or more robins in the yard.

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One keeps a regular sentinel on the chickadee’s nest… the one that is waiting patiently on the shorter post.  There are three tiny speckled eggs in there… so sweet.  And a house finch made it into this shot, too. They are frequently at the feeders, along with the golds.

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But it’s this little sparrow that I get the biggest kick out of.

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He’ll come several times a day, tap lightly on the back of the water sprayer and then jig around to the front to catch the drip.

In other backyard news, I have the best garden I’ve ever made this year.  An early spring coupled with timely rains has made it lush and beautiful.

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We’ve been enjoying a variety of salads and rhubarb recipes and are looking forward to other good things soon.

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And if you’ve seen these potatoes on Pinterest, I’m trying that this year.  I’ve never grown potatoes before, never could justify allotting so much garden space to them but this method could remedy that. It will be an interesting experiment no matter how it turns out.

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Can you think of anything worse that a beautiful pear that tastes like sawdust in your teeth?

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How about a whole bowl full, same story?? I won’t be getting those from Costco again.  I took a photo so I could paint them later and then threw them away. Such a waste.

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Speaking of sawdust in my mouth, that’s how I feel when I read the newspaper accounts of the Edwards trial.  I simply can’t read it any more.  Perhaps her view will make more sense?

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This was a gift from the librarians for volunteering this year.

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I will enjoy it all summer, provided I remember to water it.  They welcomed me back to the middle school, even though they know my kids will both be at the high school next fall.  Hopeful wishing for the extra help with all the budget cuts that somedays don’t allow them to take a lunch without closing down the media center… it’s such an easy job, I’m surprised they don’t get more volunteers for that.

My other volunteer job is much longer and usually more boring.  I take my laptop and type up a few more of my grandma’s letters when I go.  I hear her in her writing and scarier still, I hear a lot of the phrases I still use.  It’s some sort of a Nebrask-ozarkian twist passed down through the generations, not necessarily good English.  I recently read about when my dad came into the picture.  I’ve heard it before but it’s a different picture coming from the mother-in-law.   I love it.  I’m going to miss those Tuesdays with grandma over the summer.

And for the last little drop in today’s stew, I’ve been taking a photo a day of this allium plant and posting it over at my photo blog. It’s been a great challenge for me to find new ways to photograph the same thing day in and day out.

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Someday soon I may try to combine both blogs into one new fresh start.  I’ll let you know if I do.

Fresh Picked Lunch

This is some of the strongest tasting lettuce I’ve ever eaten in my life… almost strong enough to make me rip it out and plant a milder variety.  I have to say the taste is growing on me but the zingy flavor will not be a big sell to the rest of the family.  It is growing absolutely beautiful in the garden.

(Can you tell I’ve found textures?  I don’t get out much… Kim Klassen shares her beautiful creations here…)

Wet, Muddy Feet

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Not THAT wet!

This wet.

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Molly and I hadn’t been to Eagle Creek for awhile so even though it had poured torrentially the day before, I pulled on some tough shoes, we grabbed the lake camera and hopped in the van.  I’ve decided to have a “lake camera.”  I’ve taken my new camera a few times but I feel like it is so heavy and gets banged around too much before the walk is over and I don’t like that risk.  My old Lumix is lightweight and I really like having one nice zoom lens to take a variety of shots.

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There are tradeoffs… I don’t feel like I have as much control over what comes out of the camera but it does do a nice job on the auto setting and I’m more comfortable holding it and the dog leash and hiking at the same time.  The batteries I use with this camera are around 5 years old now and last approximately an hour each if I’m lucky so I’ll need to order new ones at some point.

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The turtles were on their log again, much like the ones in the header photo but the grass was so soggy I decided to skip trying to get close enough for a photo.

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By the time we got back to the van, our feet might as well have been this wet.

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Molly is still licking the mud from between her toes.

 

Hodgepodge

These photos all link up in my mind…  really, they do.  Or maybe not but we’ll try to make a connection.

The frogs started crying.  Or singing, or whatever it is they do when they talk about impending things like darkness and rain all mixed together.  The tricky part is there were about seven of them, all lined up in a row on the pool cover and they cried, loudly, all night long and kept us awake. The big lumps in their throats came again and again…

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And because they cried, it rained.  Or because it was going to rain, they cried.  You’ll have to tell me how they know because it baffles me.

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It also baffles me how raindrops turn things upside down.

Upside down, blurry, a bit confusing…

similar to waking up in a box when you’re supposed to be a bunny in a snug little hole in the yard covered by your momma’s protective fur and nice and warm with your seven other siblings.

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After you’ve been dug out ruthlessly and nearly escaped being breakfast for the big yellow beast that roams the yard. Yes, that yellow beast… the one that is upside down in the raindrop.

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Maybe that’s a little how I felt when these came in the mail…

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When I learned he would pick up his cap and gown before coming home…

When I pulled this out of the dryer yesterday…

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When this was posted on facebook…

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When that pro-elite biker above brought home a change for his senior year schedule…

When I read my last post and realized that that field trip might possibly be the last one I go on as a parent…

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A hodgepodge of impending rain and darkness… a big lump in my throat… disoriented, out of my nest… seeing life upside down and blurry and just the thought of it all echoing around in my head keeping me awake at night.

Okay… so it’s not really as bad as all that, I just had to have some sort of story to go with all of these pictures.  Now if only I can get that raindrop out of my eyes.