Category: summer

Reading under a tree

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This morning was a lovely one: breezy with sun and fresh Appalachian air, cool enough to pull weeds and plant annuals without breaking a sweat. Leaves rustled, bees buzzed happily from flower to flower.

When I watered in the new bright yellow zinnias, scraping dirt from beneath my fingernails while I held the hose and thought about what I’d eat for lunch, a pair of small brown-orange butterflies flitted round each other in that twirling butterfly dance they do.

I looked over at the shade beneath the dogwood tree and thought, I want to sit there and read my book.

So here I am. Flowers bloom all around me, a soft yellow butterfly drinks from a purple salvia, grasshoppers chirp and birds trill, leaves quiver and shake, the sound of a far off lawn mower drifts over the hills, and the breeze makes a low whooooo sound across my ears. 

It’s going to be a good night for sailing.

I am enjoying blogging from my phone — it’s so immediate! I can publish from anywhere, including the shade of the dogwood tree in our front yard.

Die aphids!

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I think I may be deriving too much pleasure from finding aphid corpses all over my milkweed plants. But it is so satisfying to squirt them with soapy water, then come back the next day to find desiccated aphid bodies where plump, orange life-suckers once were.

Killing aphids may be the highlight of my mornings now. Today I went out in quite a getup: purple workout clothes, green rubber boots, a flowery coffee cup in one hand, and a plastic spray bottle filled with sudsy water in the other. I giggled as I  squirted aphids, thinking of my friend J when she played out a similar attack on hornets. She used RAID and screamed a battle cry, “Die MoFos!* ” as she lunged in with the killing spray. (*cleaned up for public reading). She’s my hero.

The milkweed is for the caterpillars. Aphids beware.

Morning in the garden

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When I left for WordCamp Europe, our garden was pregnant with plump flower buds: echinacea, milkweed, hydrangea. While I walked the streets of Vienna, admiring the red geraniums that spilled from window boxes, I wondered how my flowers at home were doing. We can never get our flower boxes looking as good as the ones I saw in Vienna, but that’s ok. I have my whole life to keep tinkering.

It was dark when I arrived home after 24 hours in trains, airplanes, airports, and cabs, but not so dark I couldn’t see the outline of a new purple coneflower when I dragged my suitcase into the garage.

Every morning since I’ve gotten home, I make a smoothie*, walk downstairs to the garage, slip my feet into green rubber boots, and walk out into the dewy grass. I inspect the milkweed, parsley, rue, and passionflower for caterpillars (none yet) and check out the progress of all the flower buds. I deadhead a few withered blossoms. Sip my smoothie. Listen to birds trill. Nobody in the neighborhood is outside. I have it all to myself.

I keep trying to get a good photo for y’all but I’ve had zero luck. Despite digging close to 200 holes and putting a plant in each one, there are still large open spaces in the beds. I know they’ll eventually fill in, but for now the garden is young and I just have to accept that. My husband said we can take our daughter to pick out some annuals this weekend to plunk them in the open spaces. She will be very excited.

Morning in the garden is my favorite way to start the day: beautiful, serene, full of life.

*For the smoothie-lovers, my smoothie usually has kale, banana, walnuts, flax seeds, frozen pineapple, frozen strawberries (or peaches or mangos), and pineapple juice.

Yellow flowers, foggy morning

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Mailbox and yellow flowers in fog by Andrea Badgley on Butterfly Mind
Warm flowers on a cool morning
We spent the past week moving: we are homeowners again. We’ve gotten the unpacking to a point where we can lounge in the living room, find clothes in our closets, cook in the kitchen, and eat at the table.

We’ve also gotten to the point where I feel like I can take a breather from unpacking boxes, washing walls, lining cabinets with shelf paper, and organizing all our stuff: I can stop and enjoy our new home.

I opened the blinds as soon as I woke this morning and saw fog nestled between houses and trees. I am a sucker for fog. And when there are warm yellow flowers popping around our new mailbox against a cool foggy backdrop? It’s time to get the camera out and start shooting again. In our new home.

We moved locally, about five minutes from our previous home. After 12 moves in 20 years, this time we hope to stick around a while.