Assemblage comments: 86

My crew was busy assembling floss packets for ornament kits this week. (Yes, amazingly, it's that time of year again!) For the majority of the early summer I had pretty much decided that I probably wouldn't design an ornament kit this year, just because I've been so busy with the web site and am fried. Then, one day when my computer was broken and I was sitting there with nothing to do for an hour and a half, I started drawing and wouldn't you know it three ideas for new ornaments popped out. I guess that's what it takes — a whole hour and a half with nothing to do and I can think of a major project to do. So the machine started it squeaky but irrepressible crank back up again. And so we will re-issue a limited edition of the past four years' ornament kits, as well as this new one, of which there have been glimpses around here lately and which is called Winter Cabin. Wouldn't you know it's probably my favorite one of them all. I love the palette for it so much. More details on the new kit (and the old kits) to come! For now, my trusty sidekicks assemble floss packs and I make them cappuccinos in the afternoon (good trade off for me, no?). I got this little stovetop espresso maker the other day, and the little milk frother I got last winter has been awesome. These were actually pretty good little cappuccinos, I was surprised!

Hot coffee in the afternoon will probably be a thing of the past this weekend — it's supposed to get up to the high 80s and maybe even 93 over the weekend. Once again, it's only 59 right now so I am enjoying that while I can. Thank you for the perfume recommendations!!! I ordered several testers from CB I Hate Perfume, which several of you recommended, I think. I can't wait for them to come. Maybe my sissy and I will spend a day searching around town for the others you recommended and having a smell-a-thon while she is here. I will report back. :-)

I didn't make the roasted corn soup above (it's from New Seasons), but I aslo have to think of some things to cook while Susie is here. Dear chocolate lovers, she says she has brought the Best Chocolate Cake Recipe in the Whole World with her. She told me I had to get this kind of baking chocolate (Cacao Barry Extra Brute), which I did, so I am ready to taste proof! I'm also hoping she might help me clean my oven with the self-cleaning function because I am afraid of it and need a professional chaperone. Do we know how to entertain our guests here, or what??? Perfume shopping and oven cleaning — thrilling!!!

***The seed pod in photo six is called scabiosa — thanks Jessica!

Best Weather Ever comments: 129

Mid-70s, sunny, gentle breezes. Perfect, rare, delicious weekend days. Best weekend weather I can ever remember in my entire life. We harvested beets and potatoes from our wee garden plot on Friday afternoon. It was silly exciting — you stick your hand in the ground and come up with a bunch of gorgeous Yukon Gold potatoes. Cube them up, add a couple of the tender onions you also pulled out of the ground, add one of the teensy heads of garlic you also pulled out of the ground, splash on some olive oil, shower with pepper and sea salt, bake at 375 degrees F for 40 minutes, add some butter when they come out and you have the best dinner ever. Oh, and do the same thing (without the butter — or are they good with butter?) to the beets. That you pulled out of the ground. The best dinner to go with the best weather. I almost cried. To think there are probably twenty-plus more potatoes still out there? Oh my stars. Next year I may just grow potatoes, onions, garlic, and beets.

The wee sidewalk garden has been such a good experience. I have loved it all so much this summer. I was sitting out there on the stairs last night, watching the beautiful twilight come on after such gorgeous weekend weather. I thought about how the butternut squash and the cucumbers are now trailing up the teepee where the peas grew last month. I thought about the day we put the peas in, months ago. Having a vegetable garden makes the summer seems different, somehow. I've never noticed all of it, or appreciated all of it — the ground and the water and the sun and the season — quite so much as I have this summer. Cliched but true. I like sitting out there every morning and every evening, watching it all change. I like fussing over the tidy little squares of rows. I don't really know what I'm doing at all but the stuff still grows. It's much different and a lot more satisfying to me than growing flowers and shrubs. I love the flowers and the shrubs, but the vegetables are different. Maybe because it's just a smaller area, with defined boundaries, and it feels like the right size for me when the rest of the yard feels too big and like too much (even though it's really not all that big). The vegetables also appeal to my utilitarian nature. I have always liked to make things that get used.

Also, it's just still so bewildering to me that it all worked. We put it in the ground and then it just worked out. I'm not used to that.

Something's blooming in the woods right now that makes allergic people go crazy but makes me happy. It's some kind of weed that I like the smell of but I don't know exactly what it is. I'd like to bottle the scent. Speaking of, I was thinking of buying some perfume. I haven't bought any in years and years. I want something that smells like the summer woods. Any recommendations?

On Thursday night we went to Edgefield with friends. I sat on the quilt and knit while listening to Steven Martin and his bluegrass band. He was hilariously funny. Our friend's eleven-year-old niece was visiting from Texas. She sat next to me and watched my hands while I knit. She asked me questions: Is it hard? How many things have you made? What's your favorite thing that you've made? Who taught you? We talked through the night and I won't deny that I hoped she might go back to Fort Worth with the spark of an idea about little sticks and string.

Summer comments: 86

Ah, yes. It speeds up now. I remember.

Little Flower comments: 67

Thank you so much for all of your kindness, and each and every one of your generous and tender words yesterday. I had a nice day and spent a lot of time outside in the front yard, fussing in my little ways over the garden and trying to make things nice out there. It felt really good. The plums (and leaves) on our big tree are starting to fall already. I set the little bunny sprinkler up in different areas and let it spray its gentle umbrella of droplets under the tree, in the vegetable beds, on the rock wall, along the fence. Clover and the Bee were quietly stuck to my side. Even the Bee, which surprised me. Last night she sat next to me on the sofa for the first time in all her twelve years. They miss their little flower, too. This morning we three went out again. Oh how I love that quiet hour before I start to hear traffic. On the rock wall, the watery circumference of the sprinkler was only a couple of feet. It frothed and tinkled just past the fence and then we heard the swooping in of a bird — a big, beautiful Northern flicker, coming to get a little bath, just feet from us. That's how quiet we were! Magical creature. She flew up into the plum tree and hopped around a bit, then worked on the telephone pole next to the tree, then left.

Last Friday night, Andy and I went up to the meadow at the arboretum. We sat on the hill among the daisies and the clover and the tall blond grass and watched evening come through. Behind us, between the enormous evergreen trees, birds swooped and darted in the mellow twilight. He picked me a bouquet and I carried it through the field and it's still in a pretty iced tea bottle on the table.

Little cats leaving make you think about your life, all the years that have passed and the way that you were. You think about all the conversations you had, just with her. There are ways I want to change myself and I thought about them last night, and told Andy about them.

The vegetables are growing like crazy! We shared the first tiny little red tomato on Sunday night, slicing it and sprinkling it with sea salt and olive oil, adding basil leaves and blobs of whole-milk ricotta and mozzarella. I can't stand fresh tomatoes from the grocery store, generally. But this one right off the vine was seriously the best tomato I have ever had. It really was like a little jewel, ruby red. I felt a little bit proud. We kept insisting the other one of us eat the last slice (which is how we fight over it). I see another one today that's on its way to being red. I hope he's home when I pick it (pulled like a magnet toward the tomato plant, hands out in front of me, leading), or I'm going to eat the whole thing (chomp).

comments: 459

Our dear sweet Violet left this world on Sunday afternoon. She was eighteen years old this summer. We'd gotten her when she was a tiny kitten. She used to sit on my shoulder, like a little bird. She'd wake me up by sitting on my heart, and staring at me. Our sweet, sweet friend. The angel of our house, for all of these years.

This morning Clover Meadow and the Bee and I were sitting out on the stairs near where we buried Violet by the picket fence. It was quiet and beautiful, just the sound of birdsong and breeze. The light filtered softly through the green trees. We sat out there for a long time, just watching. When I stood up to go I looked down and saw the one little flower, all by itself. I looked around for others, though they are long out of season, but there was just this one little one.

Little prayers for her. Such a good girl. Dear lovely ever-sweet friend. xoxo

Indoor comments: 179

Summer seems to have truly arrived! I know this because I've had my air conditioner on for two days and am afraid to leave the house.

Thank you so much for all of your incredibly kind comments yesterday.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoooooo

I got four of the books you recommended! I am excited! I am very drawn to books that have very strong plots lately. I need the plot. My life feels overly busy lately, so I like that feeling of following a line (doesn't have to be straight) through a book. I want to be hooked and pulled through the water. By a tugboat. Towed in.

Do you make good iced tea? I'm trying to learn. I love iced tea, but half the time mine is really disgusting.

*To those who have asked, yes, the crewel embroidery is from Embroidery Companion, and the Tanglewood bag pattern is here :-). Thank you!

In Early Evening comments: 141

Sometimes I miss Montana, miss living deep in the mountains, miss the rolling Clark-Fork River being right there at the end of our street. You could ride your bike in the evening along path at the edge of the river, with the cottonwood puffs floating and the mountains rising and the sound of the water rushing by. Fairy-tale thoroughfare. We once saw an otter on his back, floating under the bridge, right through downtown. We lived there for three years. Everything smelled like pine and smoke, sharp and dry. I miss how small the town was, how bored I could get with it, how much I wished it would rain, how I would wander, lonely, around Butterfly Herbs half the afternoon, drinking smoothies and hoping to run into someone I knew. I was haughty and fragile. Intimidated. I tried to learn to knit and practically had a nervous breakdown. The leaves crunched dry in the Rattlesnake. I liked the path along the creek in Greenough Park, the little bridge there, the weeds and wildflowers that grew in the front yards of houses near the railroad tracks on the north side of town. Everything was glinting and strange, the light different, clearer and more harsh than it had been in Illinois. I didn't own a car. I taught tried to teach college freshmen how to write argumentative essays. After the first semester I prohibited all argumentative essays about legalizing pot (this was a favorite freshman topic; there are only so many why-marijuana-should-be-legal thesis statements you can read without wanting to clonk stoner freshmen heads together, which I assume is also illegal). We had no money. On the last morning of the month I scoured every pocket and looked through every book bag in the house, trying to find enough change to get a cup of coffee on my way to school; no luck. Found a dollar in the snow, right in the middle of the street in front of Food for Thought, and could hardly believe it. We babysat for a lady with two little boys, one of whom couldn't speak. I still remember his name, and how sweet he was, how she cuddled him, how he liked to watch the movie Fantasia over and over again. I worked at Penney's in the home dec department, and folded fluffy new towels into thirds (strangely satisfying). Andy worked in a rock quarry. He would drive out and pick me up in the truck after work. We went everywhere, so happy to finally be living together, giddy with this. It would stay light so late in the summertime. I remember one night when we were walking home late from the bar and this guy on a bicycle suddenly flew past us and nailed the curb head-on, knocking the chain off his bike and himself flat. He jumped right up and, totally hammered, tried for several minutes to nonchalantly ride the bike with the chain clanging and hanging like a necklace around the pedals (pedaling furiously, going nowhere). Then he crashed straight on through the underbrush of the embankment and disappeared. Andy and I stared at each other in amazement — what in the heck? — and fell over laughing. I remember the hollyhocks that bloomed all down the alley between our apartment and the Orange Street Food Farm, the teetering platform of wooden boards Andy built for Violet so she could jump into our window from the dark green tangle of our side yard, the way that the sun set pink behind the purple mountains, so pretty it could make you cry.

Summer Scene comments: 75

THANK YOU ever so much for all the suggestions yesterday! I am thrilled to get books and read and make fish tacos this weekend. Thank you for taking the time to get me going! I really appreciate it.

It's just so nice out here this morning. I feel like I could just absorb summer right through my skin. Sunshine and birdsong. Taking it slow today. Andy off today. I love this.

Dinner Picnic comments: 63

Friday night at the river beach, Sauvie Island, 6/15/12.

Today comments: 55

Ina's shrimp salad with some pasta, and a pretty little kitty catching some Zs. That's all. Nothing much. (And a whole lot, really. Favorite kind of day.)