Respite

Roese blooming under the window.

I have come home to my cottage after a very busy ten days. Thursday last, after three days of babysitting, I left my daughter's house and drove the highway through summer traffic to my son's home north of Boston. I left there on Saturday with my eldest granddaughter in tow. We came to the cottage for two overnights, then left again on Monday for Easthampton. S was collected and I stayed on to watch the younger grands until this morning. Now I've been sitting in the rocker (it's quite warm and muggy outside. All the windows are open, though, and a breeze, augmented by fans, is wafting the scent of roses in through the open windows).

I found myself constantly putting my book down just to look around and sigh contentedly. The cottage is clean and neat, the white walls reflecting the sunlight. At the kitchen window a small vase of roses provides a sprightly bit of color. Sunbeams glance through the colored glass bottles that sit on the sill. The vase of wild flowers and grasses S and I picked on Monday looks lovely in the center of the table.

Outside, the male house wren chitters at the cats who are lounging on the patio stones. Behind the patio fence the cucumbers are growing, and on the other side the phlox and lilies are standing tall, though not in blossom just yet. Great white clouds with blue undersides are piling up over the horizon. Thunderstorms are promised for late tonight. I will water the gardens regardless, in case the storms miss us as they occasionally do.

Neighbor's cat lounging near the wren house.

The garden, for all my spring effort, is doing poorly. First it was too cold, then too wet, and now too dry. The potatoes and peas are happy but only two of the four hills of squash have produced plants. The radishes are all leaf and no bulb, the beans had to be replanted en masse, and not a single carrot poked through the earth. I can count the number of beet plants on one hand and the chard is up but looking anemic. There's still plenty of rhubarb to pick and the blueberry bushes are alive with berries.   As well, there are great sweeps of black raspberries growing wild along the borders of the garden. I must count my blessings.

Black raspberries ripening.

Blueberries galore.

Peas in flower.

Flourishing potato plants.

Tonight after supper I will take a walk. I will watch the sun set over the pond. When it's dark, I will climb into my bed, rest myself on sun-dried sheets and drift off to sleep, knowing that tomorrow and tomorrow after that, the days will be my own.