Phoebe is 28!

This heirloom tiger lily from our dear friend Tanya opened today. How many years ago did I plant the tiny black bulbules Tanya gave me? Six? The chipmunks got all but three of the wee plants. I put them in the back of my raised patio bed for safekeeping.  They got a tiny bit bigger every year. And the first one opened this morning, on Phoebe's birthday. How fitting, for a graceful, flame-orange flower to make her debut on July 11!

 

It was a morning something like this, but a lot hotter, more humid. I could tell by the white sky over the softball fields as I labored.  From my delivery room window, I saw men running around practicing, hitting and throwing, in the oppressive heat and thought about how very different their lives were from mine at that moment. I was in a life and death struggle to get this baby out into the world, and they were throwing balls around. 11:39 AM, 6 lb. 14.5 oz, 20" long. She was finally here, and I'll never forget looking into her cloudy blue eyes and getting the sense that there was Someone very ancient, Someone very new, looking back into mine. 

 I contemplate waking her at 11:33 AM in this long but too-short lazy summer, when she is resting from all that she does the other 10 months of the year, cheering and coaching and teaching and buoying her students higher, helping them reach for their stars, but she wakes up on her own. We share a banana with whipped cream on it at the moment of her birthday.

 She's a top-drawer human being, and the students and their parents at the academy where she works all know it. She's been running this summer, so she can train alongside her cross-country runners as assistant coach. I watch her lithe form run steady 9-minute miles and can only dream. I've never run a nine-minute mile in my life! There's a certain peace in knowing I never will, either. I'll reach for different stars. 

Watermelon sunset glow

Watermelon sunset, in progress

How lucky can you get, to be able to spend a couple of summer months with your grown daughter and her delightful husband, at home, deep in the country? 

We've been sealed off from the insanity all around, just grooving on the flowers and birds and the fresh vegetables that are coming from the garden, that hard-won garden that I turned over by hand, weeded of its waist-high hay, and planted, that Phoebe might have peas. Honestly, the picture I kept in my head over the nine days it took to weed it was Phoebe picking peas. And we had a smashing crop! Beans are in now!

Today is her birthday. There will be cake she makes herself for the first time in 28 years.  I think she's finally grown out of Betty Crocker Fun-Fetti mix. She knows that's my once and future cake repertoire and she's upping the game. I'll make the entree: chicken posole from our dear friend Anne's recipe. We'll gather on the patio with the swamp cicadas going, and we'll stay there until the katydids kick in, two weeks early; still beautiful. The whip-poor-will will sing and flutter and cluck, Curtis will try to look like a puppy while he waits for scraps, and he will get said scraps.

A rare connection in Columbus! We've seen far, far too little of busy Liam this summer! We miss him like mad!

Ducklips in a pub

Sibling love in Columbus

                         

             Jeni's is required

If I know anything, I know these days with Phoebe and Oscar are precious and rare. To have a girl who wants to come home for the summer, and can, and does? It's too good to be true. We walk in the butterfly meadow and identify each flittering thing, moving from bloom to bloom like a couple of giant, earthbound hummingbirds.  

             

A fresh zebra swallowtail is turquoise-blue. Speaking of butterflies...

There have been some glammy moments for the pair this summer--a black-tie wedding in Philadelphia caused them to get all dolled up.

Professional makeup? Another thing I'm sure will never happen to me...

We're going to the mountains to see my family soon, and from there Phoebe and Oscar will continue on to the coast, so poor Piscean Oscie doesn't dry up and blow away in this drought. He's got to soak his merman fins in the ocean before another school year in Indiana begins. He's a silkie, for sure.He'll start work then, and be glad of it, and we will think back on these lazy summer days when nobody had to go anywhere, and smile.

throwing baked eggshells on the roof for our barn swallows

                     tying her shoe while balancing on one foot. I remember doing this, before the ballast...

                                         Happy birthday, my beautiful woodland elf. 

                              You light up the world for anyone lucky enough to be around you.