Laowai

Summer is rolling along. The pandemic restrictions are lifting and that feels great, but Brian is still stuck in his office doing meeting after meeting from home. I know he misses traveling and doing his job in person. We've been out to restaurants a few times recently and that has been great. We went to a brewery near the Leaning Tower of Pisa. So picturesque (shaking my head). 

In other news I'm still working on my garage windows. The photo below doesn't look very impressive but it shows me learning a new skill – window glazing. It's not perfect but it's an improvement. I ran out of putty so my progress has stopped for a few days while I wait for more to ship. The putty that I use is made in Chicago but you can't buy it anywhere near here (shaking my head again).

Here's Bea at the library. 

And here's Bea beating me playing chess.

It was starting to feel like Arizona living around here – we went weeks and weeks without rain. But that has changed and we're having lots of rainy weather. My garden is relieved.

I keep picking flowers and pretending I'm a florist.

Other than that we are watching the Tour de France and looking forward to some beach time this week. 

It's summer! We've eaten almost all the strawberries that I picked – strawberry shortcake, strawberry jam, strawberry milk, strawberry pie and strawberries in my cereal. Yum! 

The girls and I went paddleboarding. We all got some sunburn – oops.

My shasta daisies and my nasturtiums are blooming.

Pretty stamps that I need to get framed.

Our Locust tree is super messy this time of year so I had to do a big clean up on the patio. Take a look… quick, before it's messy again.

Enjoying most of our dinners outside. So nice!

And my latest project. I feel like I don't know what I'm doing but I'm trying to learn. I'm giving my garage's steel windows some love. Scraping paint removing old putty and then I will reglaze (yikes!) and give them a fresh coat of paint. I'm starting with just one of the four windows to see how it goes. They are big beautiful windows for a garage and I hope I can make them last longer. Here are a couple before shots.

Bea and Claire had their last days of school this week. What a strange year! Here they are heading off to their last days.

Since Bea is moving on to high school she had a special graduation ceremony. It was planned to be socially distanced and outside – basically everyone gathered in a big parking lot where you could hear the presentations through your car radio and watch the action on a big screen.

Bea with her other parents:

On to 6th grade and to high school!

In the grass there are bits of balloons from when Claire and her friend had a water balloon fight.

But there are also lots of creatures. I sit in the hammock in the afternoons. I make sure to place the hammock in the deepest bit of shade and I read. But I get distracted by all the action around me. Today I saw a hummingbird. It was in the shrubs and not near any flowers that I could see. It was here and then gone in an instant – that's always the way with hummingbirds. Then I saw two small woodpeckers arguing in a branch above my head. A dove walking around along the edge of a flower bed. They always call out as they get spooked and fly up and away. Actually there were two doves. There are always two together. The other day I heard the chipmunks making a fuss and then I saw a fox run across the back yard – so close to me. What a surprise. I'm sure he was traveling his path that is the opposite of people paths. Paths that go behind garages and along the fences at the back of the neighborhood yards where he finds some cover. And the chipmunks seem to move along their own established paths too. Along the fence line, through the pachysandra against the house, at the edge of the lawn where the garden people use the weed whacker to make a bare dirt little ditch – so that when I watch them I just see a little dash of their tail that sticks up. And they run into the garage and out under the back door that doesn't open. I know you live there – you don't have to pretend like you don't. I checked on the striped caterpillar in my garden. First of all how did the butterfly find that one single leftover carrot plant to lay her egg on? I want to know. He had eaten all the leaves off the carrot top and I after a bit of searching I found him on the dill that was about 5 inches away. He looked fatter than just a day before. The robins – there are lots of them – they don't mind coming close to me to peck around in the grass. Sometimes one will be in the birdbath and he won't even be spooked when I open the screechy back door. The robins like to go in the birdbath and splash the water all around themselves. Then they fly up high into the locust tree branches. The squirrels who are so entertaining in the winter I don't see so much in the summertime. I saw a band of black birds (I don't really know what kind they are, just inky black and iridescent) they swooped in and then they went in my little woods looking for insects. They noisily tossed aside leaves as they went. A lady cardinal came to the same area later but she just looked through the leaves very quietly. So far the cicadas have not emerged this year. Probably they will come in July. Also, I've been reading poetry by Mary Oliver. She inspires me to take notice of the creatures in my back yard.

I admire Polish folk art paper cutting. It's called wycinanki. It has humble roots – an inexpensive craft that came from shepards cutting shapes out of bark or leather. Designs were later cut from paper and they were made to decorate homes or for holiday decorations and gifts. Seems like many cultures have their own version of paper cutting crafts. I wanted to try making the traditional colorful and symmetrical style – I made a wreath. Instead of making it all in paper I just cut templates with paper and then painted the shapes on a round canvas. I intentionally made it not exactly symmetrical because it's more interesting to look at. It was really fun to make!

What a strange spring/early summer we are having. We've had many days in the 90s and almost no rain. I've been trying to keep my young plants and my pots and my garden watered but the grass looks like it usually does in August. Which is to say it looks brown. Sad. 

My pea plants have been making lots of peas. It takes a good amount of concentration to pick peas because the plant is the same color as the peas. I have two rows of green beans started. I have basil, thyme, parsley, dill (my favorite) and tomatoes too. And I have potatoes planted in two big pots just because I love to see how vigorously they grow. As soon as the peas are done I will plant something else – maybe some beets or another row of green beans.

Today I found a caterpillar. It was on a carrot that was leftover from last year. I'm worried it will run out of carrot greens to eat. 

Ferns and forget me nots. Overgrown lilacs where farmhouses once stood. Huge American flags, trillium, the sound of waves, goose poo, no cell service, shade, big freight boats and little fishing boats, sunsets, s'mores, strawberry shortcake. Chilly nights and light houses. A fox running across the road.

Thanks Wisconsin and Door County for being just the change of pace that I needed.