Here a little, there a little

Oh, look! My father- and mother-in-loves' house is so very scrumptious. Just pulling in to their farm for a family reunion makes a person happy.

A close second in the world of wonderful is that pie sign at the county fair. I didn't even have to eat any to get a sense of sweet satisfaction.

While we were in the great county of Humboldt we fed the pigeons in Eureka Old Town.
This was a first for my farm children.

 

They loved it.

Little ol' Victorian Ferndale is our favorite. The Mercantile, the Meat Market, the hat and shoe stores. It's like a Hollywood movie version of a small town but for real, because everyone there knows one another and stops to chat. And to figure out which of my husband's bajillion first cousins they went to high school with.

Yes, little Ferndale is our favorite. Unless it's littler Scotia with its big history, bigger timber and tiny houses all in a row.

 

The town of Scotia, as of this writing no longer a "company town" but not yet incorporated as a city, is a storybook of swept streets and pastel bungalows. My husband grew up here when everything was owned by the legendary (some say infamous now) Pacific Lumber Company.

 

Inside the Winema Theatre at Scotia is a staggering amount of unfinished, massive redwood timber framing and trim work. We wandered around in the cool and dark for 20 minutes, feeling like time travelers. Also feeling a little like trespassers because we had merely accidentally followed a paid tour group whose guide did not lock up. Or close the doors. Oops. And hey.

Back home the sunflowers didn't miss us at all.

                                   

 

Gee it was nice to come home again.

Tomatoes and green beans are heaping up waiting their turn in the canner as I type. I've said it before and brace yourselves because I'm going to say it again:

Is there anything sweeter than coming home again?

No, nothing sweeter than coming home again when the whole valley smells like a blackberry pie and the memories you just made will carry you through a lot of days of standing over the pressure canner, a lot of days of driving to ballet, a lot of days of your oldest child starting high school (!) and your others teaching the 3-year-old to read when you're not looking so then you have to put down the green beans and cry because that's your baby.

We take the sweet with the tart now and then. We move through our own history like we know it won't always be swept streets and pastel house fronts; sometimes it's carpool and craziness but it's, as they say, all good.

If I Were August

If I were August I'd make a note.

Summer is notoriously fleeting.

I wouldn't want to miss a minute.

Calendula and yarrow, dance and baseball, sewing and sky watching.

These notes of August make summer a poem woven of dried grasses and lake days.

I'd try not to make a paragraph, even.

Because in formation of a thesis one could lose the essence,
whole and sweet like a raspberry warm from the vine.

 Rather to jot those notes on whatever paper or palm lies nearby.

If I were August I'd make a note to revisit on days of mist and cool.

That the summer, days of wine and roses, could warm that later moment too.

A time capsule of sunshine.