Summer is Here

It's after 10:00 p.m. and I'm procrastinating. I cleaned my desk and I have laundry running but I was supposed to be balancing the checkbook. So, before cleaning the desk and after throwing in laundry, I wrote a letter to Shauna, my good friend with whom I had an amazing tea experience at Seven Cups on Sunday. Oh, Shauna, how I wish I'd had our picture taken together. Does one even exist? For shame. The above picture is a close-up of my "display tea" which is a handcrafted flower pod intact until boiling water is poured over it at which point it floats to the top, sinks to the bottom and slowly unfurls. "Tea and a show!" I exclaimed, like the complete nerd I am. That's Shauna behind the glass, her folded arms, anyway. We spent over three hours there which is standard for us. It's a small piece of heaven to have Shauna all to myself...she's a spectacular person in more ways than this blog can handle but I'll list a few: generous, loyal, thoughtful, caring, hard-working, super-intelligent and genuine. It's one of my great privileges to call Shauna my friend.



As Bill planted our first fruit tree, Hannah and Abigail were right there to lend a hand. We're very excited about our navel orange tree. Not only does it add more green to our yard but it looks great against the back wall. Gives the low wall credibility. And it has even produced a little green orange to give us a hope of a future filled with squeezing oranges and drinking its tasty juice.



Hannah sets a fine table for her guests.



Natalie is a good friend from church and she is Hannah's favorite person. Hannah has a few favorite people but Natalie is an icon. She has watched Hannah and Abigail for us a few (several?) times and on one occasion braided Hannah's hair. Abigail slept through it so I threw it into pony tails for her when she woke up so she could be fancy, too. Otherwise, it's a barrette over to the side. Like my one barrette in the back. "Rut" comes to mind.



So without further ado, here is Natalie. We drove to Mt. Lemmon last week and had a great day. Natalie voiced my current life's lament as we made our way around the town of Summerhaven..."Kids sure slow everything down!" Yes. Yes they do. Which is probably the point and something I'm learning to appreciate but I'm getting off-track. It was pretty quiet on a Wednesday so we had a super mellow afternoon. We sat for a while and looked at the wildlife...lizards and bugs...and then made our way to the hippie store. I mean, the "Living Rainbow Gift Shop." Okay, hippie store. Got snacks, found the largest dandelion ever, dragged a stick down the road. Simple and fun. Natalie is headed home to upstate New York for six weeks until school starts again in the fall and we will miss having her here.



Abigail and her stick...I finally got her to walk on the side of the road. It was so quiet, so few cars, that it was tempting to just take over both lanes.



Just one shot of Hannah's 5th birthday party over at the Tucson Children's Museum. I'm careful about not posting pictures of other people's children without their permission. For the most part. I'm sure there are exceptions. I don't feel like going through a big process of asking everyone for that permission, so I'll leave them out. You'll have to trust me that there were lots of kids, lots of adults and it was a lot of fun. Hannah was conflicted about turning 5 because she knew it came with a visit to the doctor and some shots. We held off on that visit until Monday and she did really well. So proud of my Hannah.

 

This picture shows off Hannah in her Snow White dress and it shows off our garden. Bill planted the garden with help from our friend, Sattar, and with help from the girls. Sattar provided guidance and direction from his years of gardening in the middle east. The girls' help was very hands-on, the let-me-put-in-the-seeds kind of help. We've been eating a lot of tomatoes, purple beans (they turn green when boiled) and zucchini. We have butternut squash getting ready to pick and corn, too. It's an impressive garden and we're pretty happy with our first endeavor.

Now to balancing the checkbook...oh wait, I hear the dryer.