Take Joy!

My chicken house is clean.

Relatively, anyway. I still need to take an old broom down there and sweep out the cobwebs, but the hard part is done. (And I will pay for it tomorrow, I can tell already.)

That is all.

Midsummer's Day—Hail Sunna!

I spent the afternoon in the Midsummer sun, picking black raspberries for jam and plantain leaves for infused oil and feeling thankful for all the earth's good gifts to us. (I surprised the catbird among the brambles, and  he was not amused.) I have sun-colored flowers to plant this evening: rudbeckia and coreopsis, shasta daisies—white with yellow centers—and a daylily called Black Eyed Stella. And sparklers . . . Midsummer calls for a bonfire, but I am inept with live flame (even the woodstove makes me vaguely nervous, still) so I will wave sparklers about at dusk, and watch the fireflies . . . and think on the Powers That Be at the midpoint of the year, and ponder what the next months may bring, and feel the earth turning into the long slide down to winter.

Here is my virtual bonfire—

Midsummer night in Finland. Picture found here.