All on a (very hot) Summer day

Larkspur’s favorite activity is anything that involves paper. She has several drawers filled with notecards, envelopes, and bits and scraps of paper.  I get an incredible amount of  “mail” from her.  Honestly, this paper addiction sometimes drives me a bit crazy. I feel like I am forever picking up trails of paper and adding them to the recycling can.  I do my best though to act excited every time I get more mail, or another “present” even if it is the twentieth time that day that I am opening the same little bundle of crumpled paper tied with ribbon she has snaked from my desk drawer.

Yesterday, Larkpur requested new books of the handmade variety.  She dictated what color cardstock we cut for her little book covers, in addition to the color of thread we used to sew them together.  Her thread choice was hot pink (of course.)

I recently had a bunch of my photos printed for a project I am working on, and inspired by that, Larkspur wanted to decorate her books with photos.  She, Keats, and I all cut out bits of photos to glue to the cover of this new set of books.

When we were digging out supplies for our book project, I came across an unopened package of silly putty.  Why, oh why am I so stupid? Silly putty is surely the devil’s invention. 

No one really knows how it ended up in Larkspur’s hair.

Jonny started to work on removing it, but gave up and wrapped it in plastic wrap in an effort to keep any more of Lark’s hair from sticking to it.  Thankfully, with a generous dose of olive oil, I was able to remove the putty.

This photo has no relevance to anything really, except for the fact that I took it yesterday.  Keats found this dead leopard moth outside a few days ago, and she now lives on our mantle.  I like her.

Lately, I am spending far too much time with the garden hose in hand, as so many of our plants are beyond wilting, actually in that crunchy place just before death of thirst. We haven’t had rain in ages it seems.  As I headed over to water our blackberries last night, I got stampeded by our chickens, clearly confused and thinking I had some sort of treat for them.  As I snapped this photo, I thought of the most clever title for it, but seconds later, I had already forgotten it.  Must be the heat.

Last night I thought I would be picking a basketful of blackberries, but because of the lack of rain, the berries are looking terrible, sort of shriveling up as they ripen.  I did get four sort of nice ones.  What to do with four blackberries?  I guess I could make a tiny little pie and we could each have one nibble.

My coneflowers are pretty crispy around the edges themselves.  I am praying for rain!  I can hardly bear to watch all of our hard work drying up.  So far most of our vegetable garden is doing allright between me spending hours out there with the hose, and the thick layer of mulch on most of our beds.

And finally, this will sound silly, but after Okee died, I didn’t think I would ever love another dog like I did her.  But, I really really love Trudy.  I am definitely a dog person again.

Today the high is 102 again.  This heat makes me tired, headache-y, and un motivated.  But motivation or not, I have to go make breakfast now!