Scattered Seed

A view from our deck on a summer morning often brings a unique view of the sunrise through the trees. These pictures don’t do it justice. It appeared that the tree was harboring a ball of fire.

Happy 23rd Birthday Garrett!   I found this while cleaning out my desk drawer, and like many things you do, it made me smile.

Summer is my favorite season, and always has been. That is probably so, because my birthday falls in summer, and when choosing a wedding date, we chose a summer afternoon in August. Summer was always a time of rest and relaxation, for vacations, and new experiences. Anymore, the rest, relaxation, and vacations have to fit into my work schedule. So, yesterday, as we drove to Orchard Park and back (three hours one way), I spent a lot of time looking out the window, trying to soak in all the sights, sounds, and smells of summer. I love the cornfields, fruit stands, the young animals in the fields with their mothers, the smell of newly mowed grass, the bird calls and songs, the colorful flower gardens, even the angle of the sun in the sky in the evening. In a few weeks, the sky will change, and the air will feel different. It’s such a long wait from one summer to the next. I guess that is why I can’t let it go by unappreciated.

Whew! It has been a long stretch of days since we could wake without an alarm, and set our own pace for the day. Still, there was so much to do, just to catch up from our recent busy-ness, and tomorrow we are off on the road again. Today I baked cookies for Garrett’s birthday, started catching up with laundry, and tackled the most-needed housecleaning. We had to go birthday shopping, and made a special trip to the produce stand for blueberries, peaches, plums, nectarines, wax beans, and cucumbers. We had passed so many roadside stands last weekend, and I had wished we could have stopped. Now we have some of our summer favorites to hold us for awhile.

This little note awaited us, when we checked into our motel last weekend. It was a very simple gesture, but warm and welcoming, as was the wedding day itself.    We had a wonderful time.

Vermont was quite a treat. We had passed through the state a few years back, when we returned from a trip to Maine, but this was the first time we could look around, though time was short. We were on sensory overload, as we tried to take in the mountains and countryside, the quaint shops and buildings with years of history. We wished we could have taken our time on back roads and stopped more along the way. A vacation to Vermont is definitely in our plans for the future.

It was lunch time Saturday when we arrived in Waterbury, Vermont.  We were a couple hours early for check-in at our motel, so we continued on another half mile, to the Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory. It was a hot day, and the flavors beckoned.   I chose Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road. George had a banana split with three yummy Ben and Jerry flavors.   We don’t usually just eat ice cream for a meal,  but in this case,  we made an exception!

We arrived home last night from our weekend trip to Vermont. We drove up partway Friday night, and continued on to Stowe on Saturday for the wedding. Yesterday we made the return trip in one long drive of seven hours. We gave ourselves a little treat, and respite from the roads, though, by taking the ferry across Lake Champlain from Burlington to Port Kent, New York. It was a rainy crossing, but thankfully, we had umbrellas in the back of the car, so that we could get out and look across the water.

Wishing there was less work, and more time to enjoy summer. We are getting ready to head off this weekend for a whirlwind trip to Vermont, for a wedding. We will barely have time to unpack our bags, before we will be headed back home again. I hope there will be just a little time to relax, take in some new sights, and breathe in the summer air.

This is the best time in the summer, for color in the yard. I enjoy walking around in the evening, seeing the different plants and flowers we have growing now.

This was a second packet of hollyhock seed that I planted last year. The flowers remind me of the “carnations” we used to make out of tissues, for decoration, when I was younger.

I bought this perennial at the garden shop. It looked pretty desperate for a home and some water, and now it is perking up, and I love the colors.

Our tiger lilies were a nice surprise this summer. The neighbors had pulled up the bulbs last year and offered them to us. They looked pretty sickly when we put them in the ground, and we weren’t sure they had survived.

These are some of the wildflower mix George spread around out front last year. I love the delicate color.

Another hollyhock surprise, shorter but the most colorful.

This is the one lone lily left after our midnight visit by a deer. There would usually be at least eight blooms around our lamppost.

Then there is the grey of rabbit and squirrel, together under the bird feeders, cleaning up the seed.