A Helpful Invasive Species

What a great day we had! The keeper stayed home almost all day. And we got to stay outside all day. We found sleeping spots in cool places under the shed and the pampas grass.

She did all the watering this morning and was elated to find that the hollyhocks are finally blooming. She has waited two years for this moment! We tried to share the joy.

Her favorite flower of summer is on the invasive species list, the butterfly bush, AKA summer lilac. No matter what they say about that bad bush, the keeper is enchanted by the perfume of the flowers which send her right back to her childhood in July and all of those purple flowers that her mother would pick and place in huge bunches in crystal vases. The whole house was summer lilac! But today she realized that the bees love the flower and she knows that even thought it is an invasive species we are all helping to bring back those honeybees.

We also had more laundry today and it only took an hour to dry outside. The keeper says she loves hanging out laundry in the summer. She says she imagines she is someone somewhere long ago as she does this simple, homely task. Besides, she likes the smell of the clean laundry dried by the hot air.

Best of all, while we slept, she read. She finally finished Edwidge Danticat's painful story of a Haitian family's love, immigration and detention center hell, Brother, I Am Dying. She read us parts out loud. Very strong book about what happens at the detention centers that are really little gulags. Then all afternoon she sat out under the shade of the maple tree and we joined her, but we didn't share her popsicles, while she read from cover to cover, Jim the Boy. She said it was a sweet, simple story out of the 1920's about a boy growing up in North Carolina. She will start the sequel, Blue Star, tomorrow. Not being readers, we find her fascination with the printed page somewhat of an addiction. She could be brushing us.