Posie Gets Cozy

Sunday Morning

I love the quiet. Before the day has to begin.

Golden Lights

I have a new camera. It's a Canon EOS 60D. And a new lens. That's an EF 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM. Not like I know what any of that means. (Well, I know what some of it means.) Very excited. These are some of my first pictures with it. I'm really excited. :-)

Weekend Baking

I'm down with it.

Vanillaness. Up there among my favorite things, it's true.

The recipes were nice, though I think even the earliest baking time was a little too long for my oven.

Cane-sugar butter-roux icing. Keep beating it. Seven minutes.

Meadowplace

On Sunday afternoon we went to the park. We expected to find the river, but were instead surprised by a meadow.

To say I was overjoyed would be a total understatement.

The first time I saw a meadow I was riding a horse. It was early morning and I was at horse camp in Indiana. We rode through the woods and then came into the clearing. It was lit from the far side, dark green against the sun. I had fallen off my horse almost every day that week and didn't think anything good could happen. I was in eighth grade and wound tight as a coil. We stopped for a moment and stared at the field. I could not believe I was sitting on a horse in a meadow. It had been my dream for so long I could not move. He swished his tail and I blinked into the sun. I remember thinking then that I would never forget it. I haven't.

I don't know. Meadows are enchanted, I think.

People think I named the dog, but I didn't. Andy did.

Naturally, however, I eagerly confirmed the nomination. And she is aptly named.

We walked down the path toward the woods.

It felt like the warmest day of the summer so far.

At the edge of the meadow, where the trees began, there was a shady patch of mowed grass.

We sat in it for a while and watched hawks circle overhead.

Thank you, meadow.

Bright Shiny

This round of remodeling is complete. Kitchen-hallway-back yard. I am going to take some pictures of everything this week. I am also going to make the center column of this blog a bit wider so that the photos can be bigger. I took a lot of photos of wildflowers over the weekend and they just need to be bigger. Summer is so beautiful lately it deserves bigger.

I'm feeling very emotional about the house lately and I don't know why. Or maybe I do know why. Having all of these people here this past month working on it for us has reminded me sometimes of being in the hospital. With people taking care of you, repairing things, making things better, doing things you don't know how to do. I've had that thought several times, especially when my incredibly cool neighbor insisted on installing our new kitchen faucet for me. He was under the sink, covered in rusty droppings from the old faucet, banging his head on the cabinet, endlessly patient and competent. I stood by, nervously (apologetically) useless, quivery and hopeful. It was the last thing that needed fixing. He asked me to hand him a wrench; I almost passed it to him using two hands: Here's the wrench, and a little pink piece of my heart: Thank you.