SUMMER SNAPS

 

Camera snaps titled:  2013, Summer.

 

 

My usual view of the percolator until I can drink at least half of it.

 

 

 

 

Stash of sunglasses and keys in some of Caro’s HALL dishes.

 
 

Some wonderful old dishes Chris came lugging home in a sack, from a roadside flea market.   They make the table look like you’ve spilled out every crayon in the Box of Eight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We love the make-your-own soup at the Formosa---you just take a bowl, choose what you like from the array of ingredients, and they simmer it for you.  Chris  likes a bit of seafood in his, and mine is always like a bowl of wilted salad in a little broth.  With maybe a pot-sticker or two for garnish.

 

 

Miss Effie, who has been with us through four houses, having been retrieved from the dumpster at the first one.   She came with no sticks, and so she sits, nesting for all time, as she weathers and fades and breaks under the spell of time.   Tree loves her, and cuddles her close, to keep her head from leaving her fragile body as she rests trustingly against his verdigris.

 

Every Easter, she sits on a trove of small pastel plastic eggs, which disappear miraculously one Spring night, having hatched and made their way to K-Marts and garden centers all over town. 

And then one day, you'll be checking out a new garden hose, or a new bird feeder, and you'll catch a glimpse of a familiar arch of neck, or a sly look from a knowing eye in a bright pink head, and you'll know you're looking on Miss Effie's fine offspring---your own grand-flams, off to their new homes and exciting adventures.

 

The entrancing ceiling at The Cheesecake Factory.   The pastels just make me smile.

 

 

 

Sweetpea's arsenal of shoe-horns.   She had longed for one for ages, and would appropriate Ganner's nice real-horn one, so when she asked for one for her birthday last year, she got the green one in her big sack of goodies.   The others have just appeared---perhaps a reverse- grooming version of lost socks.

 

  They have myriad uses:  Digging sand, swordfighting---though we do the salute-and-swish of fencing every time, with a hearty “En Garde!” before we fall to.  And a sorta cute aside, I looked it up to see what the proper name for the salute is (salute), and found the info from a charming fencer named Epeecurean.  

 

 It's six-in-three---yes, six---the hook on the end of the green one is oh-so-nifty for getting things off high shelves, and it fits exactly over the tops of cereal boxes stored above the stove, to tip them out into my waiting hands, hoping the last person closed the box.    These tools are handy for retrieving stuff from under stuff and behind furniture, for paddling our boat down the river, for stirring cauldrons and raking up the garden.  

 

Plus, we could dress a centipede in nothing flat.

 

 

 

Caro’s marvelous Blueberry Compote over Homemade Vanilla.

 

 

One of a set of sherbet-chairs which have brightened the patio this Summer.  Can you tell I love pastels? 

 

 

 

 

 

The cluttery corner with a slipshod array of STUFF.  Moire non about the cabinet, and what I should do with it---I’ve longed to paint it cream and fill it with all my pastel dishes.   Would that be a sacrilege to a handmade family heirloom from 1954?

 

 

 

Perhaps the last summer for the grapevines---they’re on steel cables, but are outgrowing the yard.   I DO love to watch the little grapes swell and grow, and now I’m watching the raisins, becoming in the October sun.

 

Carrying that last cup off coffee out onto the Cracker Barrel porch to enjoy in the soft Summer rain.