HERE COMES SUMMER!!

 

I love this time of year!  Spring makes me -  

joyful, and my thoughts are all stumbling and tumbling all over themselves- 

thoughts about buying this and moving that. . . 

days are longer. . . 

I pass by my gardens and see little green things poking their heads through the

soil that I forgot were there. . . 

and then I feel an excitement stirring inside of me to get my hands in the dirt 

and - 

let the spring cleaning begin.

At first it’s so much fun because every piece you clean up and prune and fluff makes such an - 

impression on the yard. 

I’m pretty sure I see the yard shift with pride.  Not so anyone else would notice.   

But I’m pretty sure it did. 

At first it feels easy and then one day I stand up and look out over the vast yard and realize there’s so much to hoe and dig and all that sleeping dirt to fluff so it resembles a  

Better Homes and Garden picture.   

And then I call my friend and say “I’ll come and pick you up and let’s go

nursery shopping for plants and yard art and  

I’ll be there in 10 minutes and  

no, you don’t need to put makeup on. 

Well, maybe just lipstick. 

And on the ride to the nursery we share ideas and we both get so excited we over talk each other - 

And then in all my excitement I invite friends over for dinner the following week and  

won’t it be fun walking them through the yard and listening to all their sighs and ooohs and aaahs about how beautiful everything looks and - 

who would have thought to put that there! 

As I dig and plant and water, my eyes wander up to the back deck where all my summer pillows have found their way down from the attic.   

I take a minute to go fluff and tuck and move this pillow over 2 more inches which totally made a huge difference in how it looks with that little bit of a move and slide another one back where it originally started. 

I know . . .

It’s such a process. 

And how am I going to get my favorite red and white striped sling chair out of the attic

because as I collected my pillows a few days earlier I was greeted with a swarm of bees that had made their home in the attic over the winter and raced me to the bottom of the stairs. (I won!)

And will my deck look the same without that chair?   

especially with company coming. 

And then as I headed back out to my garden at 7 am this morning (clearly I wasn’t thinking clearly to have a shovel in my hand at that hour on a Sat. morning) I decided

to take a deep breath  

and. . . 

made a plan for our guests arrival. 

I will only walk them through the parts of our yard that are proudly waiting to be part of the garden tour- and no one will notice the piles of rocks waiting to find a home in the landscape, or the bare spots that still need attention.  

I will distract them with a fancy table setting and even fancier food.   

Well, I don’t know about the fancy part. 

And now - 

I can’t wait for our guests to arrive.

Water Therapy

 

 On any given day when I have free time you will find me by the water - salt water.   

The first place we took our granddaughter even before she could walk was to a salt water beach.  I took her shoes off, put her toes in the sand and whispered in her ear,  

 

Niya Lilly, “do you feel the sand in your toes”,  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and then I walked her to the water’s edge and said,

Niya Lilly, smell the salt water”.   

And we both took a deep breath. And then we looked at each other and -  

 I knew - 

she smelled what I smelled.

When she looked up at me and smiled, I hoped with everything in me that I had planted a seed in this new little spirit.

If I’m working in my office and there’s rain falling outside my office window, you can be sure, my window will always be cracked open.   

Just so I can - 

smell the rain. . .

I have shared my love for the smell of fresh rain and all that comes with it with Niya.  One afternoon it was raining hard and Niya and I were in our den watching a movie.  I took her over to the window, opened it up wide open, snuggled up around her while she leaned on the window sill and whispered in her ear,

 Niya Lilly, just smell the rain. 

 

 

Watch the rain as it bounces off the bright shiny leaves and listen to how -

 quiet it is.

I talked about nature and how beautiful and wonderful it is, and how it relaxes our spirit.

How when we sit by the water or walk in the woods we forget that the rest of the world exists.  Now when she comes to spend the night and it’s raining, she’s the one who takes me to the den, opens the window and says,

“GaGa, let’s smell the rain.

We have a fountain in our entry way and I have one in my office and one outside our front door.

This week we added one to our bedroom.  My hubby found this little fountain that sounds like a quiet babbling brook.  Last night as we lay in bed with the smell of fresh falling rain carried by a cool breeze floated in thru our open bedroom window, and the sound of water softly tumbling over rocks lifted from our new fountain as we drifted off to sleep.

If I ever lived another life before this one (and I’m not so sure that I did), I’m pretty confident I was a fish. 

That’s how much I love water.

.

The Cookbook

 

In October my oldest daughter Kym came to me and said,  

 

“I know what I want for Christmas”. 

  

I want you to make me a cookbook.   

 

In the last few years I made one for 2 of our nieces as wedding shower gifts.  They were filled with recipes and stories from aunts and cousins and friends and grandma’s.  With doodles showing what the recipe might look like, well wishes for the future that lay ahead for these young girls. 

Pages filled with love and lots and lots of memories.  Stories that made you laugh.  And then laugh some more.  

I knew this was what my daughter was asking for. . . 

She wanted stories and recipes from her grandma when my 4 brothers and I were growing up,  

Stories and recipes from our family when she was growing up.

 

 

  

From the beginning I knew it was less about the recipes and more about the stories behind the recipes.  She wanted a -  

memory book. 

Soon emails were sent, notes sailed across the states, phone calls were made - 

and then. . . 

letters with attached recipes began filling my mailbox. 

Friends dropped by to write in her book. 

As we go through everyday life raising our children we don’t know what attaches to them, the memories that become their favorites and that define them, the ones they will take into their homes. 

Family and our family history has always been important to our daughter Kym.  As with all families we had special traditions, family gatherings for  

everything and anything. . . 

When my mother passed away Kym came to me and said, now that grandma’s gone you are the matriarch in our family,   

It’s up to you to keep the family traditions alive.   

She is our little event planner. After we lost Phil’s sister Judy, Kym had a big hole in her heart and she needed to find a way to fill it. It didn’t take her long to create a new tradition to add to the old ones that were already solid.  From her new idea was born “Girls Week” with Phil’s sisters and their daughters and me and my daughters.  The following spring we all headed to Palm Springs to a family vacation home to have our first “Girls Week”.  Some of our favorite trips have been to San Francisco, San Diego

and wine country in Sonoma where we rented a home from the Sabastiani family who own a winery in Sonoma.  What we find on these girls trips is when you spend 5 days together you have these special pockets of time with each other that never take place in family gatherings or when you stay in a hotel.  These are the times when we really get to know each other.  When stories are told that we otherwise wouldn’t hear.  When we let ourselves become vulnerable with each other.  Where we become real.  

And so as I sit putting this book together I know it’s important to leave empty pages

scattered among the written ones to make room for Kym’s stories that she will add one day.  To add her own stories to our family history.