Richness

To Begin

(Breakfast. Watching birds. Imagining that Trixie, our cat, 

nicknames birds by mouthfuls...)

Three cats at the window,

looking at lunch

One bite, two bites

munch munch munch!

Eliza

:: :: :: ::

Do you ever forget to pay attention? I do. Even now, my multi-tasking has me examining the sprig of dill on my table (the flowers are SO BEAUTIFUL), consulting my medicinal plant book for information on sassafrass, listening to Tin Hat Trio, and pausing now and again to wipe the sweat off my face (yes, it's hot again).  All while waiting for my photos to upload so I can write this post.  Even so, today I paid attention. It was a great day...

We went to Wednesday market solely with the purpose of feeding our love affair with fruit.  It is so fleeting, this season, even with the languid oozing of the sweaty days, it is so short. So why not buy as much fruit as you possibly can?  Peaches, possibly the last blueberries of the season, more peaches (they were soooo good), sunsugar tomatoes (they count as fruit, don't they?).  I convinced the girls that this might be our last cool morning and we should maybe see what treasures the woods held for us? They were reluctant, as it's been weeks since we took a good long hike...they had forgotten how wonderful it is.

The treasures were many...and color-coordinated in lovely shades of green and orange...the rain has had fun with the forest...

(This one amazes me. It looks as though it grew so fast,

it still has the dirt it pushed through capping its top. 

There is something really tender about that to me.)

We are deep into another amazing tale by Ethel Cook Eliot, called The Wind Boy, and it sprang to life in a narrative today as I stumbled across these forest creatures fast asleep on the moss...

It is one of the things I love most about hiking with my girls; our adventures can so easily be transformed by the imagination. I remember hiking with Eliza when she was 3 and Ani was in the sling and I so desperately needed the stride and movement of a hike to work out the kinks in my body and the fog in my new mama mind and dreaded dragging her little body along...Peter Pan saved us.  There were lost boys and crocodiles and pirates around every turn, and it was me who had to work to catch up and we arrived, panting, back at the car over an hour later...

Today they were forest children, wind creatures, Tree Girl...I was a human with clear eyes, able to see the inhabitants of the natural world...it was lovely.

The textured map of the bark of a sycamore tree...

Our loop brought us back to the pond to spy on frogs and wonder, do they ever actually sit on lily pads? and eat some market-bought buttermilk biscuits.

This was a beautiful slice of our day, but it was not the only beauty in it.  We have enough dry, what-are-we-doing-and-WHY days that I want to savor every dimension of this one! There was breakfast discussion about how something was going to be 10 and another 10 - twenty, right? There is a slight pause as food is being eaten and Anika says, "Well, that means there will be four fives." That might not sound amazing to you, but this isn't the kind of thing we drill, it just comes up as we are figuring out life, so when those things are grasped and noticed and articulated, well, I tingle.  There was the Water Cycle program at the library, there was Where the Wild Things Are this evening in a large snuggle on the futon, there was more Wind Boy, there were more maidens, there was knot-tying and bow-tying and more facepaints...it was good.  And if you are still reading, thank you for being interested and supportive enough to follow along on the ins and outs of our days and if you are Dan (yes, my husband), this post and its glut of pictures are for you today, because you have been spending every evening for the last month in a black hole of the theater and tomorrow is your Opening and you will be Ours once again!