The Library

I love long weekends for projects around the house. We tackled the porch this weekend (with much heroic effort by Josh) and added great new living space (well, for three seasons at least). From the vantage of our new library, we will be able to enjoy the fine weather, take a nap, watch the birds at the feeder or a passing thunder storm, and have a glass of wine and good conversation at the end of the day.

The other side of the porch is headed towards being a playroom. In just a few short weeks, those recycling bins will be replaced by a train table, which is Charlie's birthday present (Shh! Don't tell him.) I see hours and hours of summer fun on our porch ahead of us. Won't you join us?

Seen Today

Seen today:

• A dead fish
• A bird eating a dragon fly
• A funeral procession

Also seen:

• The bright orange flash of an oriole's wings
• Wildflowers bursting open
• The delight of my son watching a waterfall

These days are few and fleeting. Temperate and sunny. Unstructured and leisurely. Filled with the sweet sound of first-formed sentences. Lessons in being and how a moment's being slips away into memory. I want to hold each day in my hand, love it, and, without regret, let it go.

Purple

This morning I woke up and it had turned from May to July overnight. I went out into the sultry dawn and took some pictures of the equally sultry flowers blooming about the house before getting ready for work. I dressed in this wonderful theory blouse that I scored for $20 at a consignment store. My true love told me that I hit it out of the park with my outfit, that I looked like the iris in our front yard. I had my annual performance review at work and felt like a rock star. Color today purple!

This week

1. The pepper and tomato seedlings went into the ground. Cross your fingers that they make it through transplant. This is the first year we started from seed inside.
2. Garden expansion continued. Hostas split and other plants transplanted to the space near the new butterfly garden to continue transforming the grassy area off the sidewalk in front of our house. Progress made toward eliminating areas that need to be mowed and letting the wild in.
3. Read "The Napping House" by Audrey & Don Wood approximately four hundred times.
4. My picky eater tried miso soup, sushi, edamame and seafood tempura and enjoyed some of everything.
5. Listened to Charlie sing - The Alphabet Song, Happy Birthday, Baa Baa Black Sheep, and the Itsy Bitsy Spider. He also sings along with his (and our whole family's) favorite dvd, "Here Come the ABC's" by They Might Be Giants.
6. Enjoyed my new favorite summer drink - rum, lemonade, soda water, frozen blackberries, and mint.

A Little Magic

Wonderful things happened around the house this weekend...

I remembered that I married a man who can find four leaf clovers. Good thing. I can always use a little luck.

I planted a butterfly garden full of native plants:

• Wild Bergamot
• Purple coneflower
• Sky blue Aster
• Brown Eyed Susan
• Lupines
• Ironweed
• Hoary Vervain
• Early Sunflower
• Milkweed
  

All along I had a good friend. We blew dandelion fluff, made chalk drawings and practiced climbing.

Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden Spring 2010

I Smell the Pretty Flowers

I'm grateful for the rain, and grateful that the rain is gone. This is the third year taking Charlie to Eloise Butler. He can walk a good portion on his own and can speak in simple sentences to describe the joy we share at this lovely quiet place. It's officially a bird and wild flower sanctuary, but it's also a sanctuary for humans like me who sometimes need to hide out from the "too muchness" of city life. Being around so many plants calms me like nothing else. Plants seem more than anything else to exist beyond human control. They preceded us and will easily reclaim any spaces we vacate.

Lilacs!

It's lilac time already. With the warm April we had it has come a little early this year. I love to clip them from our bush and bring them inside so the whole house is filled with their perfume. I love to go on walks with the kids and stop and smell the lilacs together.

Because I love lilacs so much their appearance always brings back a flood of memories from lilac time in previous years. The photo above is from the end of May 2008 in the final stretch of my pregnancy with Charlie. My favorite memories of lilacs are from that magical time at the end of each spring semester in college when campus was filled with flowering trees and bushes. There were final exams to think about, but aside from that, no one had a care in the world. Days consisted of lounging on the grass, drinking beer with friends, kissing boys you always wanted to kiss before they graduated, and general meandering. Lilacs are a symbol of everything that is hopeful, delightful, and easy.