two days...

first, to the woods...you might have realized by now that "the woods" is another way of saying "with dearest friends"...

Here is the latest of hazards on the golfing green: wasps known as cicada killers.  Dan came running shortly after teeing off, to get me to come and see hundreds of these enormous wasps swarming over the grass.  Apparently they are usually solitary hunters, but there must be a nest there, and they were flying in a frenzy, not bothering the humans, but woe to the cicadas, which are equal in size to the wasps and are carried off by these little helicopters. Wow.

I also found my first hornworms, on E's tomatoes. The ones with the green horns are tomato hornworms, these with the red horns are tobacco hornworms, which unfortunately are not too picky when it comes to substituting tomatoes for tobacco.  We brought two home to over winter in their pupas...(Yes, everyone wanted to feed them to the chickens, but I can't resist the opportunity to watch...)

 Day two started with inspired painting. The night before, we visited one of Dan's fellow teachers from the summer arts program he is wrapping up this week.  As soon as we walked in the door, she was leading the girls to her art studio!! Paint, rollers, brushes, palettes...heaven. Eliza is asking for a home studio of her own, and we think we'll work on that in a couple of weeks when we return from visiting family up north. In the meantime, she is making do with the kitchen table.

My contribution to the art afternoon

 And off to our Farm Friends (we've got it all covered - we're the Townies, in the middle - the Woods Folk are to our Southwest, and the Farm Friends have the Northeast) for weekly potluck.  There was a lot to catch up on - new turkeys, a baby goat who they think was bit by a copperhead, a garden to wander through...

 This would be my Facebook profile photo, if I believed in Facebook.  I call it Tourist Among the Chickens. I was a little afraid that the chickens would jump on my head...

 The gaggle of 5 kids asked to go through the woods and down into the ravine to visit the creek and look for crawdads, by themselves. Off they went...After an hour had passed I asked Dan to slip off with me to just give a holler and see how they were doing, and they were already on their way back up the hill, soaking wet, happy, with a bucket of crawdads. I am so grateful for these wild excursions of childhood...

 The air is hazy and foggy from the heat and the tremendous rainstorm that had just passed through...it looks dreamy to me...(there are wet clothes in the net!)

Oh, Summer.