fun and games

Eva set up a river today for leaf races and then a game with her favorite erasers that she is collecting these days-



Swimming at the mouth of the river. Guinea pig on his own rock island.



Frog keeping watch. Elephant and penguin slide.

Samuel is heavily immersed in Harry Potter and Transformers these days.



Optimus Prime- who, by the way, had us both pulling our hair out a few short weeks ago. Has that much time passed already?



The kids have both been enjoying the fresh sand and water in the sand/water table. I thought there was a hedgehog family crossing that bridge when I last looked but I see that the army guys wanted a photo of their own.

Samuel took apart one of our small etch-a-sketches a few days ago. I took some pictures because what was inside was so curious- the tiniest balls of what we found out later to be aluminum. We also discovered these tiny aluminum balls are fragile and easily crushed by human fingers. (Later, we saw some of our local "small" ants carrying away some of the balls to their nest. Building material? Housing supplies? Who can say.)



Sorry- nothing to properly give them scale, but you can imagine if one of the smallish ants could carry two at a time in her mouth.



And here is some of the smashed aluminum immersed in water.

The rest of the contraption consisted of two knobs, the purple, plastic shell, and glass for the screen. There was surely something more? Something else set aside with the test tube of aluminum Samuel saved. Some small, nifty, gadgety piece of goodness, no doubt, to preserve and treasure and remember the experience by.

We picked marionberries and boysenberries for the first time yesterday. I made a mostly-marionberry cobbler this morning with a few boysenberries thrown in for good measure and between Eva and I, half of it is gone. I am planning to make marionberry jam either later today or tomorrow and hoping to pick more of these berries to freeze and enjoy either Tuesday or Wednesday of this week with some blueberry picking thrown in tomorrow to keep things balanced.

Eva picked up some more currants and yellow raspberries from the u-pick's farm stand after we had finished picking. I told her I would make currant-raspberry granita if we had enough. Which we now do. Yum!

finished shawl

I'm so excited- last night I finished the shawl I've been working on. I tried it out this morning and it really is the perfect summer weight in Rowan summer tweed (70% silk, 30% cotton. I used color 537, summer berry.) The shawl is a Vine Stitch Wrap from I-can't-remember-which-book-from-the-library. {Sorry.} It measures 22 inches by 55 inches. I used size 10 1/2 needles.

This post could read Cats Keeping Cool-



Samuel took this picture of Maxwell sleeping in the tall grass recently. And here is Magoo resting on some dried leaves.

But then I couldn't resist throwing in one of Albert looking extra cute. And he doesn't seem to be keeping cool here, although who can say really but him.



Albert snuggled between two blankets.

berry lore

A few berry related events. We went to the upick on Monday before the heat struck and Eva ventured off to pick currants on her own. She had been practicing doing various errands around the upick the last couple of times- going to the bathroom, going back to the car for an umbrella, going for some water, that sort of thing. And this time she was off to the currant section. We're not sure what we are going to do with them but I have some ideas about jelly I am investigating.

The first jam of the season has been made and consumed in great quantities. Raspberry! I decided not to make strawberry jam this year and am planning, at least for the time being, to make at least some boysenberry jam, if not Marionberry or even black berry. I would love to make a cobbler as well but since I have frozen all of the excess berries at this point, I am waiting for it to cool off a bit before I head back to the upick to pick some more. I'm wondering if this heat will be enough to jump start some of the other berries who start to become available during this particular berry time.



I picked the first pint from our blueberry bushes out front the day before yesterday! Obviously, this is a very exciting event and I am looking forward to picking more. They are big and blue and perfect out there. I feel a little trepidation about going out this evening to see if there are more but may check on them if it cools off later.



Blueberry transition.

zen and the art of summer

We three- Jack, Maxwell, me- sit outside together in the morning brightness. Jack, on the patio, in the shade. Me, on the patio, in the sun, a little further out. Maxwell, in the grass, in the shade, furthest out of all. I sit in the sun for hmmm ten minutes, maybe less, then move to the steps in the shade. The animals knew it was too hot to begin with. I sit in the sun {initially} because it is probably the only time today- the only time for the next couple of days- when it will be cool enough to sit there.

Yesterday I sat in a field at the park in the shade, undone by the heat {for the time being}. Looking around me, I noticed literally dozens of blue dragonflies flitting about among the patches of dried grass left by the lawn mowers. They sat still long enough for me to look closely, then buzzed off to greet others. Two flew together, ran into a third, split into singles. They flew parallel. They flew alone. I was- stunned? pleased? rapt?- and kept watching. This going on around me shook me out of my summertimefunkwiththeheat and reminded me {again and again and again I see the beauty in all seasons but have the hardest time with the heat of the summer, even as the beauty is obvious} of the many ways of summer.

I thought about picking blueberries in my front yard last year in the 100 degree heat, drinking water, wearing a hat, not-staying-out-too-long-but-long-enough to save the berries from the heat and focusing on what it felt like to be in that heat rather than pushing it away or hiding from it as I so often do. I don't do this often, so fragile to the heat do I feel. But sometimes- some times- I will embrace it. I will sit in it, like today, in the morning, with the cool breeze tricking my skin. It feels at once the heat from the sunshine, not yet fully warmed up for the day, and the cool of the wind. I reach for a fleece even as I know it will be too much just now to put on. And I think about this summertime feeling, of bringing a sweater, but never really using it, except indoors in the air conditioning. I let goosebumps rise on my skin in the cool air more readily than I would during the other seasons. There must be something to this, the knowledge that it will warm up, it is warming up, and the goosebumps will fade away at last.

And of course there is so much to love about summer. It ranks first among favorite seasons. There is the heat. The time outside. The light. The greenery. The growth. Abundance. I walked home from the park yesterday, bowing my head to the powerful sun and thinking about tomatoes. Tomatoes, after all, love the heat. And I very much look forward to my first fresh tomato of the summer. It can't be long now. It looks as if the sun and heat are here to stay. I repeat a little mantra in my head as I reach home, "Tomatoes love the heat. Tomatoes love the heat." And then I enter my house and bless it for the air conditioning within.