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.

Dinner & A Movie

Tonight was date night with my favorite brunette and blonde. Josh is gone for the evening at a work event, but how could anyone be lonely with two warm little bodies snuggled up against you?

Dinner: Spaghetti and turkey meatballs. Ellis helped me cook when I could tear him away from reading Wayside School is Falling Down by Louis Sachar - "Just let me finish this page..."

Movie: The Iron Giant. If you have not seen this fantastic adaptation of Ted Hughes' story set in cold war America about how we are what we choose to be, you absolutely must check it out. If you don't cry at the end, your heart is a tiny cold stone. Movie night would not be complete without stove-popped popcorn (why would anyone eat microwave popcorn at home?) and frozen fruit bars for dessert.

I don't know how many days I will have of the three of us sharing a blanket on the couch, but I try to store them up like sunshine for the future when I am no longer the most important person in their lives and they have better things to do than hang out with their mom.