Ben's grand day out

Ben walked into our living room yesterday and said, "This is your living room. You have a couch, big chairs, a fireplace, and . . . and . . . a planet!" The planet is our world globe, of course. I believe that this is further demonstration of one of Ben's salient traits. The child is a classifier. When he could barely talk (about the time he decided that he was going to call me grandma), Nate came home when I was taking care of Ben, and Ben said, "This is my father." When I told him last weekend that I'd pick him up on Friday, he said, "Fridays are a good day for grandmas to pick kids up." Or he'll say, "Kako's my pet." He always goes for the larger category, at least one step beyond the specific. I find this a fascinating quality in such a young person; I have no idea what it portends.

Anyway, we had quite a fine time yesterday. We played in the dollhouse, which I am careful to refer to as the "little house," to avoid any idea that it's for girl play. It is a wonderful little house, made years ago by Ted, not really for a child, but for something to do. The shingles on it are the extras of the ones that just came off our house.

You might be interested to know, Suzy, that the first things Ben goes for here are the Josefina foodstuffs. You've seen a photo of him playing with the little dishes and food. He also loves the bread oven, with its uncooked and cooked loaves of bread. He's good at the sleight of hand of putting in an uncooked loaf and then producing a cooked one.

We spent some time in the garden (hot!) and watched Wallace & Gromit's "The Wrong Trousers" and discussed our favorite parts of it. I love the chase scene, but Ben's favorite moment is when Wallace falls into the wrong trousers. It brings shrieks of delight. He ate two pink-lemonade popsicles of my making, and we spent a fair amount of time just running around the yard. When it was time to leave, he didn't want to go, so I had to chase him down. I told him, finally, that if he ran away from me like that (he can wear out this old granny), I wouldn't be able to have him over to my house. He told me he didn't care, that he never wanted to come back. I finally got him into the car, and he pouted most of the way home. He did at one point, however, tell me that he'd changed his mind, and that he did want to come back to our house. When I called Marty on the phone last night, he urgently wanted to talk to me to make sure that I knew that he did indeed want to come back here soon. Ben hates to say goodbye, hates to leave where he is. He has a lot of Capricorn traits, the poor dear. I predict further homesickness in his future.

I have made one more dent in FC 79; I made Tex-Mex chicken salad out of the l/o beer brined chicken. It was extremely good, and obviously could be made with any leftover chicken. Drew raves from Charlie.

Back to picking up a few shards of last week's blogs. Summer solstice (and the other three cosmic milestones) are a big deal in our house, since the sun has so far to go from one extreme to the other (yeah, I know it's the earth moving, but you know what I mean). Truly it sets in the northwest corner at the summer solstice, and over the shed to the southwest at the other extreme. The days are hugely long here in the summer, but they lengthen and shorten so fast during the inbetween times that it's almost frightening. It's a killer to have the days starting to get short just as summer is getting into full swing, but of course that's made up for by the lengthening of the days in the dead of winter.

I did go straight to the FBoFW website and was amused by the eyeblinks. You know, I predicted quite a long time ago what was going to happen in the strip. I said that Thérèse would leave Anthony with the child. I further said that Elizabeth would end up with Anthony and Françoise and that she would help him raise the child. For a while there, Paul Wright seemed to be throwing my scheme off, but recent developments are making my scenario look more possible. What do you think, Suze?

Well, that's not much, but catches some of the burning issues, I hope.

Quick garden update. Charlie came up yesterday afternoon with actual potatoes, full sized Yukons! Hurrah! I'd mentally pegged 1 July as the first exploration date, so am totally delighted. He fried some up with onions last night to go with grilled cheeseburgers (sans bun) and frozen corn. It's creepin' up. Fridge full of garlic scapes (I think I'll freeze some), and small onions that were going to seed. Broccoli looms. We've eaten one cabbage, but there are five more ready to go. Plus six more that will be ready in August. Lots of lettuce and arugula. The squash is thinking of blooming, but the cukes are bloody slow. They are barely growing. And I'm trying to make sure that there's dill when they're ready. This is not too easy. There are the full-grown volunteers from last year (ready for pickles now, thanks a lot) and then the little wisps of things I've planted. By the end of summer there'll be more little wisps from the current big ones . . . . We'll see how this all works out. Peas continue. Pea picking was interrupted by a short thunderstorm this morning, and we haven't gone back. Not enough rain to make it unnecessary to water; the soaker hose is in the corn as we speak. Anyway, harvest and preservation are beginning to take over from weeding and maintenance. Watering shows no sign of coming to an end.

A day of loafing around here, really. We're reading, enjoying the AC. Right after the rain it was beautiful, and we sat on the deck and enjoyed weather perfection. Not even any bugs. By the time we were done with lunch, it had turned hot, cloudy, muggy, horrible. No further rain is predicted, but it sure looks and feels like it could happen this afternoon. We've really gotten short shrift in the rain department.

OK, that's it for now. I, too, am enjoying the Paris letter. Glad I took the time to write a few things about being there. I should intersperse these photos, but I'm too lazy.

Charlie and Ben having a chat on the deck.


Ben playing in the little house. The roof is off, so you can't see the shingles. The little folk and furniture are some I bought for Julia in Fargo.


Ben and Charlie in the garden.


Ben with popsicle in front of our totally-out-of-control daisies.


Organic gardening. I actually took this photo of Ben, but this is what was in the background. Note the cabbage moth. This has to be one of my favorite garden pictures ever. I've printed and framed it.