Littles from the Day

1.  Radishes pulled and washed and trimmed and sliced and soaked overnight in salted water.  In the morning, Nora and I added the celery and mustard seed (that grows in all our hearts "so that the birds of the air can nest under its shade"), the vinegar and sugar brought to a boil, packed in sterile glass jars because this is the way to preserve the gift.  And this gift is particularly delicious even if the pickles are pink.

2.  Remember those old dressers I told you about as a way to make myself accountable for painting them?  They're done.  It only took one coat of Kilz, 3 coats of "Fuzzy Sheep" and some sort of "antiquing" paint that's supposed to make old stuff that you painted to look new look old again.  Don't ask me.  I just buy the stuff.   (Sidenote: When I told Nora I was painting the dressers fuzzy sheep, she got excited in that quiet kind of way she does.  She'd come check on my progress until finally she said, "These aren't looking like sheep at all.  You need to glue some cotton balls to them and add a head, some feet and a tail."  I need to remodel more often.)  I don't know if I like them or not yet.  I suppose I'll find out over the next 20 years.

3.  Ila's Tiger Lilies are here.  The vases in the house have been empty for the last couple of weeks.  I'm looking forward to having flowers in the house again.

4.  Nora is feeling much better (despite her raspy voice).  I needed to get a few things done (hunter gathering at the local grocery store) but I didn't want to subject her to the public just yet, so we drove to York and Mom watched her while I foraged for crackers and ran packages of frozen chicken off of cliffs.  We stayed for supper, sitting outside on the porch.  Grilled T-Bones, deviled eggs, baked potatoes, rhubarb crisp.  Nora's face was covered in healthy, summer dirt smudges from playing outside.  She had an ice cream cone after supper and the ice cream somehow washed the dirt off.  It's a mystery to me, too.  One I won't work too hard to solve.

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6.  And a quick list: New music for drive-thinking, laughing with the gardening geeks who host the Backyard Farmer and realizing that I'd become one of them ("Ha!  More than one zucchini plant!  Oh, man.  That's hilarious."), ukulele gigs in the future, fireflies and bringing in the groceries, contra dancing, good people I love loving, and:

How the entire world is so green right now I can hardly drive a car safely down Hwy. 34.