Last weekend

JT built a fire pit under the willow tree in our front yard. We've been roasting marshmellows and making s'mores ever since. Yum.

Joe.

Lily and Lily

JT picked these apples from our trees.

They're delicious.

New additions

Lily keeps adding to our family.
This is "Po", our kitten. He is one of the four kittens born to our cat "Punches". The other 3 siblings were adopted by my mom( thank you very much), Lily's friend, Lily #2 (see Lily 1 and Lily 2 post) and Stephanie, who works at the veterinary clinic.
I am not an animal person, although I have learned that I'm very tolerant of them. As of today, our family has a dog, 2 cats, 3 donkeys, a hamster and 8, make that 7 polliwogs.


These are the polliwogs.( AKA tadpoles)

About 2 weeks ago, Lily captured these interesting creatures in a stream and brought them home to live with us. There were 8 but now we have only 7. Sadly, we noticed that the one that morphed into a full fledged frog is missing. Lily spent hours building this deluxe tadpole home only to have that ungrateful resident jump into the cold cruel world to go it alone. (Too bad for him. We wish him luck.) For the others,we keep marvelling at this evolutionary process. Every day we see the little legs grow then the arms and eventually their tails shrink down to nothing. They become frogs. It's cool.

Summer Reading

The kids first day of school is on September 2nd. This is when I consider summer officially over, so I'm a little premature posting my summer reading list but better early than late, I say.

As usual, my book club is on a hiatus for the summer. This 3 month break gives us a chance to read more of our own selections and weed out the good from the bad from the very ugly. On the second Tuesday in September we will gather again over dinner, wine and book chatter. Each of us will recommend a book or two then we'll discuss the merits of the suggestions and eventually choose our fall selection. I'll have a few to recommend, thanks mostly to my sister, who recommended many of my summer books. Jerilou is a great resource, not only because she and I share similar interests but also because she is a voracious reader. (She told me that in high school my mom enrolled her in an Evelyn Woods speed reading class but was quickly removed because she read faster than the teacher. No doubt.)

Here's my list:

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (science fiction) , Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund (historical fiction), Close to Shore by Michael Capuzzo (non fiction) and, A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich. All good!