Author: lizardek

After the craziness of the last month or so, and the amount of STUFF I’ve had going on, it is very nice to have a full day of nothing but the deadlines of birdsong and bike rides to define my day. I slept in, mosied around, dusted, did some vacuuming but not all, ran the dishwasher, put up two more window screens, ate lunch, fed the kids and read half a book. That, my friends, is one lazy day for me! 😀 I just showered and am going to the grocery store to pick up “cellar-smoked” ham for the baby...

All the 42 different shades of green have blended and become one, a great green leafy soup. The lilacs are browning, burned on top from the sun. Trees and bushes with white flowers are blooming: spirea, chestnuts, guelder-rose, and rowan. I love the rowans with their big white flower clumps that become bright red berries in the fall. Their leaves will turn intense shades of orangey-red then as well. Wild carrots* trace a frothy lace of icing along the roadways. Leopard’s bane, daisies and meadow buttercups dot yellow in fields of puffball dandelions that tremble and shed with every errant...

I drove home through the summer sunshine with the windows rolled down and the music blasting…Doowopsalsaboprock by Kid Creole & the Coconuts had me bouncing in the driver’s seat and singing along. Oh for a convertible! Anders and Martin had beaten me home and were heading back out to run an errand. I ate a quick dinner, put laundry in and put up the window screens on about half the windows (did I mention it’s SUMMER?). Then I decided to read for a bit, and TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATER I woke up.

1) It’s Thursday, one more day to the weekend! 2) Karin is staying overnight at a camp tonight, which means she’ll have a blast and WE’LL all get a good night’s sleep 🙂 3) The sky is SO BLUE! So so very blue. A perfect, unmarked, endless robin-egg’s blue, and the weather is warm, sunny and SUMMER! 4) I already walked 20 minutes today, at lunch, when we went over to the old restaurant for salmon and stuvad spinach. yum! 5) Once again, no plans tonight…except laundry, some cleaning, a bit of web work, and a walk in the evening...

Anna of little.red.boat collects animal noises in other languages and has a friend who collects the phrase, “I want to buy some Velcro,” for what to me are unfathomable reasons. Since one of my sophomore year college roommates, Nancy Paz* taught me how to say give me a kiss in Polish, I’ve collected the phrase in as many languages as possible. You never know when it might come in handy. I have them written down on a little slip of paper in a treasure box, a list that includes Arabic, Finnish, and Greek. Off the top of my head, without...

It wasn’t roses…it was an orchid. I like orchids a lot but I can usually only keep them alive for a few months, which makes me sad. This is a really cool orchid, too, I’ve never seen one like it. It has a purple, triangular pocket and a fangy fringe of points hanging down to cover it. My picture of it isn’t nearly as spectacular as the orchid prints that redpirk posted today, though! 🙂

We were just told that salary discussions which normally take place in April, with raise payouts starting in June, will be done in September this year, with payouts starting in October. Describing my mood at work immediately after as not happy would be rather an understatement. Good thing my darling husband will be cheering me up with flowers and dinner out for our 8-year wedding anniversary tonight.

I got the dying camera to squeeze out once last gasp, shuddering and choking all the way…just so I could take pictures of the rock and post it here for posterity.

Red poppies and cheerful oxeye daisies have sprung up everywhere, they’re waving in the breeze. The rapeseed blossoms are failing, but their smell still overwhelms. The uniform green of summer has swelled across the land. Lilacs are everywhere, white, lavender, and deep purple, they smell so good. Summer weather is here this weekend, it’s warm and sunny, with cloudless skies. Yesterday I power-walked with Karin. I told her before we left that she had to keep up with me, but as you might have guessed, by the end it was I who was keeping up with her. She chose the...