Summertime...

Queen Anne's Lace always reminds me that it's summer.  As a little girl, we'd pick a large bouquet and put it in a vase with water and a few drops of food coloring... The color uptakes into the flower and you can have pink and green and blue.. it was always one of summer's trademarks... a vase of  lace on the kitchen table.

Equally white and airy... a full line of whites. Admittedly, this line followed a two week stint at camps for the boy... which netted him numerous new shirts.  These will come in handy very shortly, when band camp starts and white shirts are both required and helpful in fending off the heat and sun of the long, hot days of setting drill.

Candy lillies... and their beautiful little freckles... never cease to amaze me and scream 'summer' in bright and cheerful hues.

Please ignore the weeds, and focus... focus on those beautiful, heavy, early summer fruits!

Juvenile barred rocks... not a great shot, but they're at a skittish phase.  A promise of fall and winter layers and table birds,  a summer 'right of passage' on the homestead.

Figs, on a bush fairly loaded... if we can just get to them before the ants!~  One of the distractors when you practice organic growing is that sometimes, the insects share more than you're inclined to agree with.  The natural sweetness of the figs is such a summer bonus, for the ants and humans alike.

Love that black and white theme the big chicks have going.  Love to go into their coop and gather the eggs, and watch them, on their 'time out' plunder the pastures for bugs and treats.

A reminder to find and order up some heirloom apple trees... we need to replant a few so that a few years down the road, we have more of these, at various times of year.  With fruit trees, the planning is actually a 5 year or so thing and a promise of hope for the future.

Blooming mint... cool in iced tea... fragrant on a late summer evening and a feast for pollinators.

Tadpoles, in the warmer shallows, busy growing so that they can join the night chorus by late summer.

 Late afternoon, cool and calm down by the river, under the cover of old growth trees, with the night noises beginning to pick up and the fish biting.

 

An invitation from a kid, who is now a man, to join him on the bank.  Quiet time with nature and time to reflect on growing things and growing children and growing older.  Thinking of a time when he was in diapers and toddled about the sandbar, chasing frogs and his sister.  Reflecting on his right of passage to being male... night fishing with the men... and how proud he was to be big enough to be allowed to go.  Seeing the peace and calm that this brings him even now, when his world, most days, is in a city that bustles with movement and sound.  Praying that being grounded always brings him 'home' and settles his heart when he needs it to.  Hoping that precious summer evenings, his life long, bring him home to the river and grounds him in the same way that it does his mother.

Reminding you to slow it down for summer, take the time to accept that invitation, or extend an invitation to share the season before the next one rolls around.