Simply summer

Summer window with garden flowers

The summer heat invites us to enjoy simple pleasures. 

Party decorations

Sitting by the water and just enjoying the breeze, summer evenings with friends and candle lit dinners with flowers picked from the garden, bike rides under tall shady trees, watching the birds and the bees, busily following their own paths...

Stormy sky over the Greenhouse

A storm rose in the afternoon, just to pass with lots of thunder but little to no rain.

The heat is unbroken. Maybe tomorrow.

And yet...

Playing tennis with Papa

Yesterday we went up to visit our youngest son (12) at camp, he is homesick and we felt a little sad leaving him tearful for another two weeks. There are surely great experiences to be made at camp, we hoped for him to have the best of times. But we felt his deep sorrow and the daily busy routine gets to him. He is a sensitive boy and the loud and permanent presence of so many kids and the strict daily regiment seems to be his undoing. 

Fueling the emotional batteries

We had no idea this would happen. He is a well rounded young man with good friends and an easy nature.

Additionally he was so severely sunburned, that I brought him to the nurse to have him treated. She had seen him before, but did not really follow through. I wondered a little about the boy's care up there. He has blisters on the back of his fingers and earlobes the size of a nickel...His nose was crusted over with burns.

We were shocked to see him like that! He still is not ready to take care of himself and there is clearly a lack of reminders at camp.

This being his first camp exposure, we all learned something new about him.

We decided to bring him home two weeks earlier then planned, making the camp four weeks long, enough for him and enough for us. 

I am secretly counting the days, surely just like him, to have him back.

A tiny hummingbird came to sit near me in the honeysuckle, just resting before the storm passed overhead, reminding me of every silver lining....

Black chinned hummingbird 

And it occurred to me, that these bittersweet experiences will also have their good, we just will have to wait and see.

Learning about oneself is not always easy.

And now it just begun raining, softly and steady! Welcome cool air!

All images by V.Zlotkowski