I am sitting in my back yard with, luxury of luxuries, wireless internet on a functional laptop and I am watching my three year old and seven year old son play with the neighbor children next door. It's late. It's Friday. And there are exactly one and a half days of school left for the year.
Robins are singing. Finches. A bird we call "The Everynoise Bird" is chirping its strange and seemingly patternless tune. Technically, it's called a Cat Bird. But Everynoise Bird seems more appropriate. It's what we called the bird before we could find it in the National Audubon Society book.
The Siberian irises are in full bloom and lights around the neighborhood are turning on in response to the fading of the sun. Cobbled piles of tree cross sections, felled from spring storms and cut with friends to ideal cordwood lengths wait to be chopped and stacked and dried in the summer sun.
The light is dusk.
The wind is cool, and sends tall green oak and maple tops bobbing and swaying with a whispering sound. Treetops further back are bluer behind a mist and moisture. Children are yelling and charging and creeping around trees and lurking through dense clumps of short pines. The woods are full of pixies tonight.
That vegetable garden is filled to capacity. Seeds have sprouted, seedlings planted, tomatoes supported and sprouting yellow flowers. Beyond the occasional weeding, all that's left to do now is wait, now, for the produce.
The street lights are coming on. Rhubarb stalks are wide and red. Strawberries are ripening in the patch. Ready for another round of pie, I think.