Summer days...

Our days are full with summer.  Growth, water, sun...Ani traipsed in with a variety of flowers the other morning, and we spent a long while looking at them carefully.  We compared their structures, marveled at their colors...

looked at them under the magnifying glass, and then - gasp! - cut them open with a knife, to better see the different parts.  Where is the pollen? What part makes the fruit or seeds?

Dan and I got to spend HOURS together in the garden on Saturday (it was a DATE.  it was wonderful!! and, people, if you have a date with me, I'm telling you, you will end up working in our garden, no question.), and though I didn't get pictures then, he took a few a couple days later. With all the heat last week and the rain this week, things are really growing...

It makes me so happy to be there.  I just planted 11 little sweet potato plants and hope that they survive.  Friends of ours who live on one of the most beautiful ridges in the county invited us to pick blackberries anytime we want (yes, Seattle - the blackberries are ready already!), so the girls and I went out yesterday for an evening of picking...

Yes, I cringed at their bare arms, but they fared much better than I, sticking to the paths our friend had mowed.  It was a lovely way to celebrate a summer evening, amidst the butterfly weed and the milkweed and under a pinkening sky...