These are the days
the not quite lazy days of summer...
of flip flops and bare feet, a long exhale without socks and jackets in a world so green that surely soon it’s going to burst.
of the first fresh cucumbers, one long English one and one short Straight Eight, both of them so sweet and crisp I express my delight repeatedly. My girls look at me and squint a little with that expression that says, “She’s being extra weird.”
of watermelons on sale and pick-your-own blueberries, or you can just fork out the cash for some already picked and then eat half of them on the way home.
of grilling supper on the tabletop charcoal grill/smoker that I found at a thrift store and when I texted Greg, “Do you want it?” he said, “Um. YEAH.”
of mint tea in the fridge, with not much sugar because that is how we like it.
of offering some to our neighbor who has never had iced mint tea and he does not care for it. I give him my homemade ginger ale, and he says, “It’s different, but not bad.” The next day when he comes, I give him coffee with one spoonful of sugar, no cream. Mostly he insists he isn’t thirsty or hungry, only he is so lonely that he comes and talks with a lady who keeps trying to give him drinks.
of doing a thorough clean-out of the shed where the lawn tools are kept, and suddenly there is room in there to park a motorcycle, which was not what I expected, but it's okay.
of cutting back the aggressive perennials in the garden (looking at you, forget-me-nots and lambs’ ears) and deadheading the spent flowers so that other plants can take their turn.
of picking the Sun-gold tomatoes as fast as they ripen, because it takes much too long to get a good tomato, and the big slicers are only green promises at this point of time.
of spending an afternoon floating on tubes down an unfamiliar creek that ended up being very deep and still so that it took four hours of energetic paddling to get one mile downstream, and so we gave it up and walked out to the road through soybean fields.
of putting a weekly reminder in my calendar to spray the cabbage and broccoli with B.t. (bacillus thuringiensis, an organic option that actually works) and the tomatoes with fungicide so that they do not all become crop failures.
of accepting that the red raspberries are a crop failure this year, as well as the peas and some other things we planted before the great deluge of this spring turned into the long, dry heat of this summer.
of working out the kinks with a brand new kiln that feels pinch-me-is-this-real because it has been seven years of wishing for digital controls. So what if I need to start over with glaze tests and trial runs and colors that look different with a different firing schedule? I can deal.
of giving my chicken era a discouraged little wave while mourning my cute hens, picked off one by one by some outrageous critter that got into the coop no matter how hard I tried to keep them safe.
of scolding the dog for losing her mind and digging in my flower bed and on another day for lying smack on the row of liriope that is struggling to live up to my expectations.
of trying every kind of insect repellent available, scaled from the innocuous oils that are clearly not offensive enough to the Deet concoctions that keep the ticks off, but might give you other health problems.
of back-to-school aisles in the stores before I have even filed the year’s paperwork or ordered textbooks.
of road construction endlessly, everywhere we go, and how blessed are we that our country can afford to maintain roads, which is not actually the frustration that it seems when you think about it.
of holding my breath while heedless bikers run red lights in town as if none of the normal traffic rules apply to them.
of a cat that sneezes explosively, regularly, at all hours, so that we cannot have our patio door open at night because he sits out there and wakes us up with his sneezes.
of writing on the patio, but realizing that the Cutter and the Tiki torches are not working well enough and nothing short of draining the swamp across the road will fix this problem, so I might as well go inside until I get a personal swarm of bats or something.
of happy days and heavy news and hearts strained to breaking, “How long?”
of studying the Revelation of John for Sunday school class with the youth girls, and how I love it, because there is coming a day that will eclipse every brightest hope we have in these days.
of rejoicing in the goodness of a perfect Bing cherry and inhaling every day the delicate scent of a new daylily while yesterday’s blossom drops quietly to the ground.
of noticing all the seeds that are being formed for the needs of the future even while we reap the abundance of the present.
These are the days to hold on… “to hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” Hebrews 6:11
