Too much fall talk. It doesn’t happen until September 22nd…after dark. Let me have the last of my summer, please.
Yes my tan is fading. Yes the nights are cooler. Yes, the tender plants in the garden are closing down. But I insist on enjoying and savoring every last drop of summer, wearing flip flops and white shorts, keeping the pool going for another couple of weeks and singing “Summer Breeze.” You cannot stop me.
Today? I savor my summer lunch:
Al dente pasta noodles afloat in a perfect, hot and sizzling garlic-butter and extra-virgin-olive-oil blend, tossed with fresh garden tomatoes (a selection of both super-sweet and those with a slightly enticing tang) and baby zucchini ribbons. My tongue trembles in anticipation as the fork, full, comes near my lips. Black pepper, Kosher salt and Parmesan sprinkled generously on top.
You would hate me if you knew how good this is! Mmmm, mmm…..
My daughters are industrious, creative, gifted and talented Proverbs 31 women. They all see to their households, as well as to the Household of Faith. They give to the poor and assist anyone in need; they shop for the best yarns and cottons and enjoy knitting and sewing. They organize their days and plant gardens with the money they have put aside. They dress for work, roll up their sleeves and are always eager to get started because they understand the worth of their work. They take good care of their families and dress in colorful linens and silks. They design gowns and sell them and bring the sweaters they knit to the dress shops. Facing the future with smiles, they always have something worthwhile and kind to say. They outclass anyone in Hollywood or the magazines. Charm can mislead and beauty soon fades, but my little women – these who are serving God with reverent respect? They are to be admired and praised! (The Message, personalized)
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Stormie and Stephanie are MayDae &have an Etsy shop.
My girlies, Stephie and Storms, are such creative women. Each on their own, but when they get together, zowie! Stormie works in the billboard-graphics field during her “day job,” and Stephanie mommies 3 of the most amazing little red-heads! They have proven to have a “good eye” on finding vintage wares that people will love. I love them bunches!
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Tredessa serves as the Director of Operations for a little ministry called Heaven Fest www.heavenfest.com
The night Dessy let us make her into an 80’s glam girl. Aaahhh….good times!
Tre directs a leadership team of 100 people, who utilized 2000 amazing volunteers this year! Daniel Miles said, at the appreciation event at Elitch Gardens that Tredessa was the “captain,” of Heaven Fest and people cried as he said (and others chimed in, in agreemen)t, “We’ll follow you anywhere.” She needed to know that – because it is true.
This is granddaughter, Amelie Belle, modeling one of her mama’s creations. Sweet baby girl!
Jovan makes the prettiest things for baby girls (her passion, imagine that) and for gifting. Jovan is my sugar-and-spice-and-everything-nice daughter who is woman enough to not be afraid of pink. And a good wife to my baby boy!
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Tara leads an international ministry with her husband and very dedicatedly teaches their son at home!
Yes. That IS Hunter’s KINDEGARTEN textbook. I shudder to think what he’ll be doing by junior high?!
I wonder if Hunter can yet comprehend what an amazing and patient momma he has? She is fully devoted to helping Hunter fulfill God’s call in his life in his generation. Plus? The woman writes songs and sings and lights up a room! My firstborn, who walks in favor.
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Quotes I love from Little Women, the movie (1994)
Marmee: I am going to write that man a letter.
Jo: A letter! That’ll show him.
Jo:Now we are all family, as we always should have been.
Marmee: Feminine weaknesses and fainting spells are the direct result of our confining young girls to the house, bent over their needlework in restrictive corsets.
Marmee:Oh, Jo. Jo, you have so many extraordinary gifts; how can you expect to lead an ordinary life? You’re ready to go out and – and find a good use for your talent. Tho’ I don’t know what I shall do without my Jo. Go, and embrace your liberty. And see what wonderful things come of it.
And from the book by Louisa May Alcott:
“Money is a needful and precious thing,–and, when well used, a noble thing,–but I never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for. I’d rather see you poor men’s wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace.”
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May the LORD bless you and make His face to shine upon you. May your lives, Tara and Stephanie, Tredessa and Stormie, and Jovan, be festooned with the praises you have earned for all you are and all you do. And may the favor of God surround you and your marriages and babies and businesses and ministries like a shield. I admire you all! Much love and a zillion kisses…mom
It was beautiful. In the hotel (The Palace) and away from it.
We were treated like royalty around-the-clock. The staff at The Palace was absolutely amazing!
Two words: ALL INCLUSIVE! 24-hour room service, gourmet dining from various restaurants anytime, any way we wanted it.
$1500 worth of activities included in our deal, among them: snorkeling, Dolphins and diving, photo sessions with their photographers, manicures, pedicures, wholistic massages, tours, and anti-aging facials, baby! Oh, yeah!
Hunter made friends everywhere he went. One little boy he played with kept saying ” Oh my gosh!” this. And “Oh my gosh!” that. Finally, Hunter thought he’d bring some correction to his little friend and he offered this advice: “Why don’t you just say ‘Oh, my goodness? Or sheep dip!’?” Hunter is his daddy’s boy!
There were scooters and an open-air Jeep zooming down the coast. Snorkeling and swimming with dolphins. Chankanaab was wonderful. WHEN I return, I shall do at least 2 days there, whereeven the fish dine on homemade corn tortilla chips (how I crave them even now).
There were reefs and ruins. Soft winds and gentle waves.
The food, oh the food! Mexican Caribbean, delightful. Mmmmm…!!
The pool looked like it flowed straight into the ocean. The air: hot, humid and lovely.
Romantic! The days were long and sweetly languorous, the evenings hung endlessly in the sky for dancing and dining.
Oh, I will return to Cozumel! ;p
Mood Music for my pictorial slideshow…Hunter and I put this together today and fondly remembered…and wanted to go right back!
Hunter may even honeymoon at Cozumel someday, he is thinking.
Push play on the mood music then the slideshow at once.
Feel the moist, warm air; feel the ocean breeze, hear the waves gently lapping against the dock?…aaaahhhhhh….I am swaying in my hammock….
Dave and I on our last night there ~ way more rested and waaaay more tan than when we arrived. Lovely!
A one week vacation and I return to overgrown zinnia and the zucchini popping out offspring like there was no tomorrow. Enough of this tom-foolery!
Yes. I was blessed to retreat on Cozumel, isla de Mexico for a week. I left Stormie in charge, a very good and responsible daughter, to water and gather the harvest in my absence. Naturally, she was more than dependable and asked me if I’d found the garden to my liking. To the naked eye I could see that things had grown a little too exuberantly lacking my firm direction, yet all seemed to be thriving.
But upon closer inspection, as I visited with rain-water sprinkler-wand in hand, I saw that true crime had been committed right in my own backyard: devious, wretched space-stealing, food-gobbling and in at least one instance: murder. My investigation will continue this week.
The Squatter Sunflower
For one thing, that big-headed squatter of a sunflower (of whom I have already spoken of HERE, exposing his deliberately bold and bullyish ways) is not only haughtily looking down on my garden from the space he just decided to plop into {where, you’ll remember, he lured an innocent and dainty lemon cucumber plant to jump from her own area straight up his stalk}, but he has now become best buddies with my Burpee Big Boy Tomato, as well. He is certainly taking liberties that only the garden’s Queen (me) should be allowed to exercise. Preliminary attempts to reign him in are going unheeded. I may have to get very tough.
See the yellow cucumber flowers? Up, up, up they go. And now the tomato is leaning on this brazen sunflower as well! Sunflower is about 8 feet tall now. *sigh…
Discovery Investigation: My garden gets hit.
Further around the garden I saw my Spicy Banana Pepper had been feasted upon by some devouring insect or another. Every leaf: gone. A lone pepper remaining and the stalk green as ever, but stripped naked of her green garments. Quite disheartening to say the least. I suspect that foul band of tobacco-chewing grasshoppers in this assault.
And can you believe that powdery mildew descended upon my most ornamental spaghetti squash while I was gone as well? She went gray overnight – the stress of my absence likely the cause. Just as well. That particular spaghetti squash and the zucchini sharing her bale had actually been plotting against me to take over the entire south yard. This will give them some humility! They are flowering and fruiting quite feverishly, to cover their shame, no doubt. Yet I, full of mercy, tended gently to them anyway this morning.
Unsolved Mysteries
But the real mystery was my Sea-Breeze Erigeron, a sort of vining daisy in the big pot near my back door. I noticed the purple sweet potato looking pretty self-satisfied, quite ornamented and very rosy. Little pink flowers were popping out and she seemed dressed to the nines in deep colored foliage. I almost didn’t notice…but then I stopped. I parted the sweet potato vines and there she was: my erigeron. Fully dead. Fully overcome. I checked for signs of life but rigor-mortise had already set in and she was completely brown and crunchy. Sweet potato claims no knowledge and the pot wasn’t dried out. The mystery remains…
Meanwhile…
Wrestling baby zucchini from the King in the Back Forty (feet) square this morning I once again look like I was attacked in a back alley, having had a brief reprive from unscathed arms during my time on the isla….
But o, backyard garden, I did miss you so. Thank you for all the love {and deliciousness} upon my return….
And thank-you Stormie {sweet, gentle, phlegmatic daughter…remember, sweet-pea ~ we do have dominion in the garden!} for tending to my wild kingdom!
O dear, what is this?, I inquire as I am watering the hale-bay mini-farm in the “Back Forty” (feet) one afternoon. A self-seeded lemon cucumber had invaded the King Zucchini garden square and was merrily vining its’ way through the orange marigolds surrounding the King himself and plopping herself over the tops of baby carrots hiding under gargantuan zuke leaves and was carefreely dotting the entire square with delicate yellow flowers and spontaneity.
I hadn’t planned for you here this year, I try to explain with the greatest tact. I mean, I haven’t prepared a space for you, hoping she will undersatnd and take the hint.
Oh no worries, the lemon cuke enthuses. I’ll just make myself at home.
I see the glare of my extra large, super-fruiting zucchini plant. He has, after all, been faithfully supplying me with enough dark green squash for 4 or 5 families this summer. I avert my eyes.
Up the hill and over the hay bale farm fence. Tsk.
In the hay-bale farm, just up the hill, a large, thick-stemmed sunflower has also roosted without my prior consent. I saw him arrive a few weeks back, invading the tomato grove, and assumed he was just passing through. I neither encouraged or discouraged his visit, thinking that my lack of hospitality via watering would send him scurrying. But no. The next thing you knew, his stocky roots were deliberately implanted, invading the straw bales with great ferocity, and boom! This sunflower is a squatter. I have continued to ignore him…until today.
For baby-girl Lemon Cuke has jumped the bounds of the garden square and is now winding her tendrils, in utter adoration, around this stately, dare-devil-of-a sunflower. Apparant partners in crime, the two interlopers have formed an undeniable attachment. A common cause, I guess. Lemon cuke has found a place to go. That sunflower is aforward fellow, I note. Quite the bold one, enticing the flowery cucumber like that.
I hope you know what you have gotten yourself into here, scowls King Zucchini.
Yes, I smile with resign as I pick lots of little round, fat, bright yellow, baby cucumbers. Yes, I do. Lots of cold cucumber sandwiches in my future.
In doing mypost-HFpantry straightening and jotting a little grocery list, I started to feel pretty superior and a bit biggety about what I saw. On the counter among ripening garden tomatoes and market avocados are fresh pineapple and gala apples. The huge in-season peaches are luscious to the bite, but equally tasty fresh off the grill. The fridge is full of zucchini, and cukes, lots of cilantro and garden dill. Peppers are fruiting in every shape, size and color. Assorted lettuces and cabbages are crisping for impromtu salads, and V-8 chills for a quick pick-me-up.
Google image
Yes, I must confess to being a little puffed up about the 3rd-from-the-top pantry shelf on which I found brown rice, jasmine and even some Minnesota wild rice. There was peanut butter, a wonderful protein and quick snack, along with sunflower seeds: both those in the shell and the “naked” variety. A box of whole wheat penne sits next to a package of Maufu Rice Sticks. There were raw and roasted almonds and a cannister of cashew halves. A bag of plump pecans and a smaller bag of Cajun Nut Mix leaned against a produce carton of salted soy nuts. For dessert? Some Archer Farms Pumpkin Spice Trail Mix or some genuine Mountain Man Cherry Nut Mix. I even have roasted Flax Seed, for crying out loud!
Lined up neatly on the same shelf: All-Bran crackers, Low-Sodium Triscuits and a jar of Greek Kalamata Olives.
Wow. Look at the good choices we have made, I muse.
Please, however, disregard all the empty take-out cartons in the trash (and fridge) and the Dr. Pepper and Pepsi cans and pizza boxes in the recycle container. Oh – and that can of processed cheese-like spread-goop. Yes. Please. Just ignore those.
I couldn’t find a live version of John Denver (which I like a lot), so enjoy this original version, silly-but-o-so-true song by the extremely tomato-insightful Guy Clark:
There ain’t nothin’ a homegrown tomato won’t cure!
Thank-you for your faithfulness in arriving each day.
Quality time is my love-language, as you know!
Stay as long as possible, please!
;p
j
With the first gleam of morning rays, the garden is a prism
of a thousand hues refracted in tiny does of crystal dew, a
dazzling quilt of millefleur colors covering
the sleeping flower beds.
– Duane Michals, The Vanishing Act
Morning Glory is the best name,
it always refreshes me to see it.
– Henry David Thoreau
JUST SO YOU KNOW: Yes, I am well aware that there is not one Morning Glory pictured here even though I chose a quote using the flower’s name and even gave it a nod in the title. Do you know why? You don’t grow Morning Glories in Colorado so much because they become crazy yard-over-taking weeds in short order here. So I am told.
Guini’s birthday celebration was delayed by the Heaven Fest craziness. So how could I refuse when she asked for a really big cake, purple and yellow, chocolate with buttercream icing and lots and lots of color and flowers…plus sparklers on the top. Presents first, dinner and swimming, then cake and ice cream. A lovely way to spend a summer Sunday evening.
And as you feel it, you’ll know it’s true
that you are blessed and lucky
It’s true, that you are touched by Something
that will grow and bloom in you
Left: Amelie Belle is 4 and a half months now and she is good buddies her Aunt Stephanie. Center: Guini the birthday girl loves her baby cousin. Right: Aunt Tara is always popular with nieces Averi and Gemma May.
My amazing and insightful sister-in-law, Dawn recently commented that these family times together, the little cousins playing tug-of-war over some toy or the other and whatever mischieviousness they can all find to get into will be memories they will cherish as they grow up. I hope they’ll know that they ARE “blessed and lucky” and that the love of these days will grow and bloom in their lives, too.
These are days you’ll remember
when May is rushing over you with desire
to be part of the miracles you see in every hour
Here we are, Dave and I and our 6, very longsuffering grandbebes. They pose for us, they smile and coo and endure photo ops. They act silly and one day, when they are old enough, they will really wonder about us! Perhaps they already do.
You’ll know it’s true, that you are blessed and lucky
It’s true, that you are touched by Something
that will grow and bloom in you
It was Guinivere’s birthday celebration. She just turned 5. Hunter is 5 and a half. Gavin who is holding baby Amelie Belle, is 7 and baby girl is 4 1/2 months now. Best friends and cousins Gemma May and Averi are 3 and 2 1/2 respectively. These are the grandbebes on a summer’s evening in August.
These are the days
that you might fill with laughter
until you break
Left: Jovan is such a good mommy to her girls. My son married well. Middle: These are the men of the family – Dave and Tristan, 2 sons-in-law who could not be more wonderful if they tried, my husband and lover of 29 years (and a very flirtacious friend for almost 3 years before that), Dave and Rocker-Bo, the kid probably most like me in the world…only waaaaay better. Right: And my beautiful firstborn, Tara with her beautiful firstborn, The Little Prince.
These days you might feel a shaft of light
make its way across your face
Dave’s hair looks really gray in these pictures, but not in real, up-close-and-personal life (except for the salt and pepper facial hair and a little in the temples). Hmmm…wonder what is up with that? I KNEW that camera was trying to make me look old against my will. This is proof! The little girlie-grandbebes rely on Poppa to keep them safe from the splashing boys in the water.
And when you do
you’ll know how it was meant to be
Left: Averi following the grandbebe swimming ritual, which is, you get out and dry off so you can go right back in again. Middle: Steph loves her cake. Right, Gemma and Averi are always in deep discussion and generally some disagreement about some topic or another. But they are besties.
See the signs and know their meaning, it’s true
You’ll know how it was meant to be
The grandbebe painted, wooden stools…crazy-looking-maybe-I-should-have-planned-before-baking-but-the-brithday-girl-loves-it-anyway cakes…a zinnia that both Amelie Belle and I took a fancy to last night on our way around the yard (where new bikes for Stormie and Rocky, no less, were being assembled, a game of catch was going on, kiddies were splashing in a pool and sweet conversation floated on the summer air). These are the signs…
Hear the signs and
know they’re speaking to you, to you*
NOTE TO SELF: To get over myself {for the love!} and get over my ridiculous heartbreaks…See the signs, hear the signs…it’s true. These are the days…
* LYRICS: “These are the Days” by Natalie Merchant
