Lunchtime!

Start with a few chips and a little cheese, the grilled onions left from Saturday, and one today-or-die avocado.

Add a slice of grape tomato or jalapeno from the garden, along with a fresh cilantro leaf.  (I'm so glad that cilantro reseeds itself, because I'm far too lazy to succession plant all summer.)

Nachos for lunch!

Let the Harvest Begin

Early Morning Kitchen

Bread in the oven; sunshine, coffee and Colorado peaches for breakfast.

Colorado Colors (part 3)

creativity

This is my friend Derri.  She's very creative.

Derri maintains that EVERYONE is creative.  She says that even people who say they're not creative really are, because we're all made in the image of God.  He's the one who thought this whole thing up, the author and originator of creativity.

Derri's theory is that talent with imagination and vision take on many different shapes and forms, occurring in configurations that we don't always recognize as creative.

Creative people aren't just composers and artists and interior designers, Derri says, but maybe also the friend who listens carefully and then is able to encourage by reformatting a bad situation into one that has hope.  Or the person who looks at mess and chaos and, in his mind's eye, imagines organization, and begins to restructure the pandemonium.  Or the woman who hears at the last minute that there will be company tonight, and manages to build a healthy and attractive meal out of an avocado, six peaches, some leftover pork roast and half a bag of tortilla chips.

This is my friend Tammy.  She maintains that artist types like Derri say "everyone is creative" just so that the unimaginative won't feel so badly about our lack.  "Uncreative" Tammy, who picked up an antique sideboard at a consignment store and is plumbing it for sinks in her remodeled bathroom.

Plain ol' Tammy, who sewed doves onto grey-green army blankets from Goodwill to make these unique and artsy curtains that cover my French doors.

I think maybe Derri is right.  The people I know are all creative -- some with fabric and flowers and paint; others with outlook or gardening or problem solving or letter writing.  Creating good and order, peace and beauty, hope and joy where there was none.  Like God Himself.  And like you.

Colorado Colors (part 2)

Colorado Colors (part 1)

Cool Ducks

Cool ducks at the county fair.

Missing E

I miss this girl and her crazy Hillsdale friends.

angles and shadows

Reflections

Thinkin' About It

Day Off

First Day of School

Yesterday was Merrill's very first day of preschool.

She has a new job as a preschool aide.  She mixed up paint, matched colored circles, pasted, cut shapes and doled out "snack".

She reminded me that most mommies take a picture when the kiddoes head out for their first day of school, so I did.

Merrill loves preschool.

Pigs

Shorts and Cowboy Boots?

Merrill has never been one to pay particular attention to convention.

Fruit of my Labors

Happy Hunting

I almost picked him, in amongst the beans.  My outstretched hand froze in the air.....something's not quite right about that color of green......

I'm happy to share my garden.  I'll eat the beans, he can have all the insects.

Advice for Single Gentlemen of Seniority

Plant raspberries.

They are chick magnets.

Marshall and Wusan

If you want to know where to get a delicious cup of coffee in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex,

or the best chile relleno, or the best barbequed beef brisket, or the best tiramisu,
or, or, or.....

you should ask Marshall and Wusan.   They've been sampling the wares in Texas, the whole USA, and around the world together for thirty years, and they remember most of it. That puts them pretty far ahead of me.

They are both actually pretty big Texas Longhorn fans, but Marshall wears the shirt to humor his little sister.




I will have coffee with them any time.

Erica Loves Pickles

Pickles from Jimmy John's.

Pickles from anywhere.

Sunday Morning, Late Summer

Coffee and comics,

pancakes by Merrill, bluebonnets by Rachel.

Raspberries

The world is so full of a number of things, 
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verse

                           
Don't get me wrong.  I don't really believe that all of the world's "things"can make a person happy.

But it's OK to be

simple.

childlike.

thankful.

Fresh raspberries as thick as chicken pox do cut a wide swath in the world of simple pleasures.

Audrey at Orientation

Talking to her classmates on the big screen.

This might not have been her favorite part of orientation.

Traveling Girl

These two studied to buy Rachel's new car in Texas.

These two danced it all the way back to Nebraska,

where this one packed it full of her belongings and zipped it off to Georgia.

Traveling girl.

Merrill

Celebrating Erica's Birthday

 First we spiked heart rates and adrenaline with Laser Tag.

Then a picnic helped us recover.

Great ideas, E.