These Two:

Are as sweet as can be. 

With big and little arms alike.

A smile to start your day with.  A friendship to carry with you.  A hunger and thirst so immediate, and so complete there is no patience in it's arrival.  With oddities and quirks that fill your heart with ache, as it is with every cycle of the moon that your heart is linked with their successes, and their falls.  A scraped toe, a bonked knee, an unintended roll and off your heart skips with their sweet little needs.  Oh, to be the mother of such two as these!  Pure and utter joy and exhaustion!

a very good idea

What do you wear to a bonfire as the tides going out?  How does it feel on a hot summer day to gather together on the shore?  Who do we talk to, share with, relate to?  Where do we stand, shuffle & skip?  A collection of friends, loves, family busy loving life.

memory

What I notice in the process of loss and remembering is that my memories are of happiness.  I find myself seeing them all in light, in love, in joy.  With smiles of thoughts, with a shine to their eyes, a brightness to their spirit.  The rest fades away.  The odd posture, the side-long glance in a photograph reminds me of their quirks, the way they hollered, their down moments.  However the way I see them in my minds is with enjoyment.  Enjoying the way they nurtured me, loved me, helped me and I hold them next to that place of love.

Off On Holiday...

We'll see you late next week with reports from near and far!

Happy

From all of us Hopkins, a very merry Independence day to you each.  We'll be enjoying our little spot on t he globe today and hope that you enjoy yours.

These Two:

Are so active,

So loud,

Exploring their hands,

Their faces,

And their smiles.

Growth.

Just yesterday I went out to my gardens, and just yesterday for the very first time did I think that things had really started to grow!  Maybe it has something to do with having greens I could actually imagine harvesting soon.  Realizing that once we get home from our upcoming trip I won't need to order greens anymore may have been part of it.  Seeing blossoms on our little tomatoes could have been a component.  Perhaps it was the cukes pushing up their row covers.  It could have been the strawberry that Ce harvested.  I won't know which and what factors told me so, but finally I felt like all my garden efforts have been worth something.

Not that I've been working that hard mind you.  It felt like more of a get everything in the ground to the best of my ability, giving as much help as I could and then cross my fingers kind of year.

So now I spread some mulch, I'm using scythed overgrown grass, aka hay, and hoping for the best in terms of seed heads leaving behind their daughters and sons.  I'm hoping that the thick mulch will keep the weeds down.  Experiments that could lead to much work down the road.  All I know is that weeding in and amongst everything this summer does not sound very appealing, so I'll use any help I can get.

I only had one bed that really felt like a fail.  In my 4x8' bed of carrots, only about 10 individual plants have made it...  So I've salvaged what I can and reseeded, the sunnier half with carrots, the back half with cool loving cilantro, arugula and lettuce mix.  The problem with that back bed is it's pretty much shaded until noon, which could be perfect for my cool loving greens...

So fingers crossed for a healthy and happy garden as we enter July.