Ready

It's the last day of summer vacation. Sunday isn't my favorite day of the week to begin with, and so today just felt kind of sucky. There was a mountain of laundry to do, and I gave the kitchen and bathrooms a quick scrub. Tomorrow will be a better day if I come home to a tidy house after work.

I'm actually ready to go back to work. I like my job, which helps. Also, I'm ready for fall. We've begun another period of awful heat and humidity, and I'm just done with this weather. Sick of it. I feel trapped in the house, but when I try to go outside to get a little exercise I'm immediately wet with sweat and miserable. Cooler weather will be, as always, a welcome relief.

Yesterday I went to visit with an older lady friend of ours whose husband died a few months ago. She's very lonely and had been asking us to come visit, so yesterday I did. I had never been to her house, and what a surprise. First of all, the house is gorgeous, filled with lots of custom details and glowing wood. There are stained glass windows all over the house, because that's a former hobby of hers, and watercolor paintings she had done as well. I never knew she was such an artist! But best of all was the outside of the property: 18 acres, most of which is wooded and slopes back to a portion of a creek. There's about 5 acres of cleared and landscaped land immediately around the house, and she had the most wonderful trees and flowers. Old roses, lilies, gardenias, and spring flowering shrub, and masses of annuals that reseed themselves every year. There were oak and magnolia trees dripping with Spanish moss, crepe myrtles in bloom, and even a giant, magnificent Brown Turkey fig tree. When she found out that I plan to plant a fig tree in our back yard, she insisted on giving me some cuttings of that even though it's the wrong season to try to root them. She said that if it doesn't work out, we can try again later, and she also gave me two types of flower seeds: Rose Campion and Hummingbird Vine.

Rose  Campion

Hummingbird Vine

I found both those images on the internet. I didn't take many pictures at Carol's house, but I wish I had. It was beautiful. And she's offered me bulbs, shrubs, rose cuttings, or anything else I might like to have for our yard--how generous!

That's been my whole weekend, right there. Visiting with a friend yesterday and doing a little bit of housework (but mostly sitting around being lazy) today. Another friend invited me over to her house to swim this afternoon but I decided I needed to do the laundry and prepare for tomorrow, instead. I won't have to cook tonight; we grilled out yesterday and have leftovers: pork chops with honey chipotle bbq sauce, corn on the cob cooked in it's husk on the grill, fresh farm stand tomatoes and cucumbers, and I may make a side dish of mac and cheese. That only requires boiling water, after all. We'll eat as soon as Gregg gets home from work, probably in another half hour or so. He usually works until around 7pm at the pet store on Sunday nights.

As I type this, I'm having a "farewell, summer" gin and tonic with lime. It's been my go-to cocktail these last two months. Easy, light, and refreshing. I may have another after dinner.

Have a good night, everyone, and wish me luck tomorrow--a new school year is about to begin!

 I'm ready.