Sweet Summer, and A Few Reflections

This post is picture heavy, then wordy.
If you stick with me, thanks!


If the heat wave wasn't enough to convince you
that it is indeed high summer, how about this?

Sweet, fresh-picked and steamed New Jersey corn.

Thank goodness for small family farms and orchards that keep

going and going and going in our increasingly strip-malled suburbs.

Believe it or not, there's good reason to call New Jersey by its nickname:  The Garden State.

On Sunday evening, having rescued the sunroom from the plastic shrouds from the conservatory cleaning,

and moving paint cans and tools and other Howard-y things back down to the now-French-drained cellar:

We decided to share a simple summer supper with my sister Peggy and her husband Bill.

See the steam coming off the corn?  Action shot!  :-)

No snazzy tablescape.  Just the food, and the means to enjoy it.

Hmmm . . . our first customer!

Master Dion asks to join us at the table.  But as always, he is disappointed with our answer.

He looks for a second opinion.  No joy there, either.

But the rest of us enjoyed amazingly sweet corn,

steaks and brats grilled to perfection by the master of the house,

salads, and grilled zucchini.  For dessert, a peach & strawberry pie from the farm.

  

And a few lace-cap hydrangeas from the yard.

But we didn't eat those!

Ugh.  Peggy's right.  Meat does not photograph well.  Ick.

I remember when we were kids, our Mom didn't serve corn on the cob until after we'd eaten the rest of the meal;

otherwise her corn-happy kids would eat only the corn, she said.  And she was probably right.

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I haven't done a blog post since last Thursday. 

I had one planned for Friday,

but after the appalling news from Norway broke, I could not settle down to posting.

I am a second-generation American, whose family all came originally from that small country.

But it was not because it happened in Norway -- it was that I could not stop thinking about the parents

of those teenage campers, and grieving for them.  Their pain is unimaginable.

Between tears I am angry with the perpetrator, and with police for their slow response.

I am not sure angry is the right word to describe what I feel, mixed as it is with frustration.

No matter how peaceful a country, in these days -- sadly -- we must all be prepared for that unimaginable event. 

A television crew managed to charter a helicopter and get to the island when the police could not.

Well, I'm going to work myself up into a weepy mess again, so ... enough.

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Now for something completely different, and completely happy.

This morning, I found a very special comment on my Thursday post.  It's from a woman named Jill, who has been blog surfing for awhile, but just discovered That Old House.

In part, she wrote:  " . . .I just finished reading the whole thing! Ive been blog surfing for months since Ive become disabled and my laptop is my buddy. . . . I have told my family about some of your blogs, I am obsessed with Dion, and your house is like a dream! I pray you never stop blogging! I feel like a distant relative just catching up on the fam. . . . "

Wow.  Jill, I want to tell you that some members of our own family keep in touch with what's going on here by checking the blog, too!   Blogging, especially the type of personal blogging that so many of us do, is remarkable because it's so very much a two-way street.  

I began back in 2008, just reading other blogs, and talking a little bit to myself on my own.

When people started reading -- much to my surprise! -- I learned how to take and post pictures.

And I've read more and more blogs -- experienced births and deaths, holidays, job crises, health issues, joyful news and heart-wrenching stories, learned how to do all sorts of things, expanded my recipe repertoire, and most fun of all . . . gotten that peek into someone else's home & family, that little peek that let's me know that we're all in this together.

We may live in the North East, or the Far West, in Canada or England or the Philipines or France -- but we all -- and we are overwhelmingly women -- we all are sisters under our many-colored skins and even more colorful hair!

You know what blogging is for me?

It has given me a voice.  When I write, I'm not just talking to myself anymore.

It has also given voices back to me, especially at difficult times.

My most-commented-on posts were the ones about losing first our mom, and then our Pop.

And so many strangers become no-longer-strangers with their kind words and their own sharings.

So thank you, Jill, for reading and laughing and sharing with me.

I look forward to you starting your own blog!

And we'll all be here to give you a hand.

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Today, it is raining.  

And our cellar is dry.  Sweet.

In the sunroom, Anne has left a box on a loveseat.  In it, hats she made in a millinery class.

She's off to the city again, as she is most days.

But when she returns to her apartment in August, I will miss her.  Messes and all.

On the table, gone are the dishes from last night, gone and washed and back on the shelves.

Instead . . . some Goodwill finds.

Come back tomorrow and see what I found!

So here I sit with my laptop, and at my feet a basket of sea and shore themed Beanie Babies.

They belonged to our girls, but most of their old Beanie Babies went to a former neighbor's children,

and these few are heading for the beach house.

But what's this?  The Manatee has tumbled out of the nest! 

Manatee overboard!

And please don't tell our macho Cavalier spaniel Dion that his

grooming brush basket has a pink handle.  Thanks!  -- Cass

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