Thursday, June 26, 2025

summer extremes

 It’s not quite seventy degrees today. And by that, what I really mean is, it’s thirty degrees cooler than it was yesterday. 

it was not this hot - the sun beats on it in the pm

I finished my firefly dress; I was going to wear it tomorrow to work - now I hesitate. Is seventy one degrees too cool for sleeveless? Probably, especially after such a cool, damp day.

it's a maxi

I had such a time getting the armhole binding to flatten out.


Wetting it, then pressing, over and over, to gently stretch the fabric. Patience and persistence were what I needed.


Last night's sunset -


I actually had to close my windows tonight - it's cool, and damp, which makes it feel colder.

Daisy in my window

Monday, June 23, 2025

midsummer

 I look out my window into the night, and see fireflies flashing everywhere. I’d like to see them close up, but it’s not supposed to get below eighty till after one o’clock; I’ll stay in. 

It’s Midsummer's Eve. I have puzzled over that for years: it just turned summer, and now it’s midsummer.  But there was something on a weather site the other day which mentioned solar summer - which is May, June and July. Now that makes sense; if summer starts in May, it would be midsummer now. Now I can turn my wondering to the next thing.

Sunday, June 22, 2025

singing to the Lord

 "I would feed my people with finest wheat and fill them with honey from the rock."

                                                  -  Psalm 81:17

It's the feast of Corpus Christi, and we're in a big heatwave - it often happens when Easter comes later, that we're outside in the hot sun for the procession. I heard a mockingbird singing a little way off - his song didn't interrupt our hymn-singing. 



Just now I stepped outside to empty some trash, and in the midst of excessive heat and humidity, I was surprised to hear a neighborhood mockingbird singing lustily; it's hardly to be imagined, but they must not feel the heat. Of all days, to be working so hard giving a concert. And who can appreciate it, with air conditioners running? I'm glad I came out for a moment.

Saturday, June 21, 2025

"seeing beauty and value in the ordinary"

 "I wish there were more wild, undisturbed places, for both wildlife and for us as humans, and a greater understanding that restoring and appreciating nature meets needs we sometimes forget we have. Under the subtle influence of the hare, my own wants have simplified. To be dependable in love and friendship more than in work. To leave the land in a more natural state than I found it. And to take better care of what is to hand, seeing beauty and value in the ordinary."

                                          -   Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare

Friday, June 20, 2025

happy summer

 It was so hot and humid yesterday that I chose my pale chambray blue sheets when I changed the bed. Looking at blue does help in the summer. And it is summer! (or will be by eleven tonight)

Today was dreamy:dry and very windy, but it felt wonderful. Now, the humidity's come back. Is the whole summer going to be this way? 

I've been busy easing the bias tape around my dress armholes, which takes some coaxing. 


I planned a Summer Supper in honor of the longest day of the year. First, tuna sandwiches, recipe here; a favorite in this house for many years - a bit fancified, with kalamata olives and red onion. Also, an eggplant recipe, very easy, where you salt and pepper thick eggplant slices, lay them in a pool of olive oil and bake on both sides for about a half hour on a high temp. Top the warm slices with a mixture of feta, capers, tomato and a few other things and it goes together pretty quickly. And the juiciness of it was just what I didn't know I needed. Then, freezer pops for dessert.

This morning I started to make them, coconut milk matcha pops, but - I know I had matcha powder at one time, but I guess not anymore  and I had already begun the recipe. So I decided to use instant coffee granules, which worked very well, I have to say. Any flavor would taste good when you're hot. But I've started a big jar of tea in the fridge, so I don't have to turn to sugary treats when I need something cold.

Thursday, June 19, 2025

days off

 We've had some people leave the library for various reasons, so I've worked a few double shifts - not exactly double, but I stayed till closing, eleven hour days. But now I have a week off! Sewing and gardening are the plan.

I'm making a dress with a firefly-printed cotton. A sleeveless maxi, a-line, a pattern I've used before. I'm almost done!


I've also got a dragonfly fabric in the wings. Black, with blue, purple and gold dragonflies. No plan yet.

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

a hundred airy harps

 Yesterday was a most beautiful day - sunny, breezy, dry. A perfect day for washing a few windows, but other things had to come first.

Today was rainy, all day. But I didn't know it was going to, and I awoke early to such pretty music. 


...those wakeful birds
Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,
As if some sudden gale had swept at once
A hundred airy harps!

-  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sunday, June 15, 2025

Trinity Sunday

 May our knowledge of you become ever clearer
That we may know the breadth of your blessings
the length of your promises
the height of your majesty
the depth of your judgments.

- St. Francis of Assisi, 13th century




Monday, June 9, 2025

the telling of it

 "We temporarily added another member to the household this week when Hollyberry Red loped onto the terrace with a very wee rabbit. No bigger than a thimble, bright-eyed, incredibly soft, the rabbit was not injured by the sudden trip. The soft mouth of an Irish setter is always a surprise, it is really truly an egg can be retrieved unbroken provided you want to play games with eggs. 

Connie was home for the week end and she spent two hours at a stretch with a baby nursing bottle trying to get the tiny thing to take some nourishment. Finally she got down a few drops of warm evaporated milk via a dropper. She kept working every little while.

In four days the small one had developed personality, waggling its ears bravely, putting a paw out, giving great shiny looks when milk was in the offing. He also made small gestures toward fixing the grass up in his shoebox. 

By the time we learned from my naturalist-cousin Rob that rabbits have front teeth so designed that they must nurse sideways, so to speak, the baby was doing very well. His will to live was astonishing.

He fitted inside Connie's small palm at first, and then he seemed to begin growing. And then we gave him to a little girl whose rabbit had been run over, partly because she needed a rabbit and partly because it didn't seem practical to raise a rabbit with eight lively cockers and a livelier Irish setter romping around. Jill said everybody would get complexes. 

But I hated to see him go. The way this very small, very wild youngling adjusted to circumstances was amazing. Lugged from the nest by a fierce huge creature full of great teeth, dumped in the midst of people, he nevertheless gathered his small forces together and made up his mind to manage."


                                    -    Gladys Taber


I just finished the most wonderful book. Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton - do you know of it? A true account of a woman in the English countryside, during the lockdown, who finds a baby hare alone on a path. She passes by again four hours later and it's still there, so she decides to take it home. 


When I think back on the books which have made a difference in my life, it's not ever just the story, but how it's told. Galileo's Daughter, The Salt Path, Under the Tuscan Sun, God's Hotel, Fort of Nine Towers - it's always in the telling of it. 

This woman focuses the book on the relationship between herself and the leveret (baby hare); she has a life, but it is in the background to this compelling situation which requires much of her time and attention. It's not a tragic story! No tears at the end, although hares and other wild creatures don't live as long as we do. She opened up her life, her home, her mind and her heart to this helpless animal, and she was changed by it. When I was done with the book, I looked around at my life and thought about all the extraneous things here, things I can possibly let go of. Things that would get in the way of allowing such an event to possibly overturn parts of one's life.

Chloe Dalton was the perfect person to have this experience, not only because she writes wonderfully, but because of the way she respected this creature so entirely. If you like animal stories, consider Raising Hare.

Sunday, June 8, 2025

the end of Easter

 Well, it's Pentecost, the end of the Easter season.  And I got out the red tablecloth for dinner.


Tell of how th' ascended Jesus
Armed a people for his own;
How a hundred men and women
Turned the known world upside down,
To its dark and furthest corners
By the wind of heaven blown.





Thursday, June 5, 2025

night lights

 I fully intended to make a blogpost today, but it was so hot, over ninety. I kept working through it all, and finally put on a bit of air conditioning at supper, but am too tired now for anything except to report that I just saw the first firefly of the season.