how great is summer? in my heart of hearts i am an autumn girl but when the days are long, the sky is blue, the temperatures are balmy, the breezes are fresh and warm, the vistas are green, the sun's rays are felt keenly on bare shoulders and the stream is cooling to my bare feet, summer is best of all. i just want to be outside or if inside, pull open the doors and windows and let the sun and the breezy fresh air make its way swiftly to the corners of the house.
as i have worked in the garden through the spring and this early summer, i've started to realize that it has finally reached its mature stage, or at least late pubescence. we began landscaping the property a couple of years after the house renovation, nearly 10 years ago, visualizing what we wanted it to look and feel like, how we wanted to use it and play and live in it and you know what, i think we're there. the ground covers have filled their spaces, the trees look comfortable and full, the bushes are needing to be trimmed back and reshaped, the grass is lush and the weeds, cross fingers, have somewhat given up in places. yes!
last week our once struggling but now eight foot tall lilac bush, transplanted closer to the house from a faraway spot on the property, was in full bloom and i gathered its richly scented branches placing bouquets here and there inside. this week, my hefty lavender bushes are in full bloom and i am harvesting in the cool of the evening sometimes until nightfall when the summer sky seems filled to bursting with starlight. my senses luxuriate in the sights, smells and sounds of these magical evenings. often, paul and i will take our dinner and walk through the grass to the stream settling into our new adirondack chairs paul gave me for mother's day this year. we set them on the bank of the stream with the flatirons filling our view to the west and forest and running water filling the rest. sometimes paul will fish, sometimes we'll wade in the water, sometimes roxy floats and chomps down great gulps of rippling stream.
we are still adding new plants and ideas to our gardens choosing onions to experiment with in the raised beds this season. they seem to be happy and doing well. we also planted a pumpkin patch in the more wild front section of the property and paul worked hard organizing the watering system to its space. i'm not sure exactly why, but pumpkin patches always remind me of the book charlotte's web. i'll have to peruse through and figure out what part that plays in its story.
speaking of books, what are you reading this summer? i have recently joined a book club many of my friends have been members of for years, attending my second monthly meeting last week. i believe i have confessed before to be a book snob, or so i've been called. for decades, i have only read classics, truly. i love them, i do, i do. i love their language, i love their settings, i love the rich stories so foreign yet so believable and familiar, i love the subtlety and i adore the authors and consider so many of them to be my kindred spirits (sharing interests and imagination only, not talent) but, i figured it's about time i opened my mind, along with a not so subtle nudge from a friend, and add to my reading repertoire. so, i now have a kindle and will add this month's chosen book to the previous two month's books to date in its meager library (it will probably another book i never knew nor ever would have known existed). i have to admit that i really did enjoy these last two books, oil and marble and the blackhouse, the very exciting first book in peter may's trilogy. check them out and add them to your book list to read over this glorious summer.
Very little is needed
to make a
happy life.
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