Daily things

These are from the documented slide images David took for the Rackateer piece he's showing in Philadelphia right now. It put the clothesline to final use during a rare hour of sunlight-- mostly, it's just been this sad, dropping thing, dangling tiny forgotten socks and dirty towels in the rain.

Summer has finally graced us with her presence, and next weekend we are going blueberrying (a dollar a pound!) at a nearby berry farm. We are entranced by wildberries; on a hike a few weeks ago, we discovered a handful of wee strawberries growing near a stream-- stragglers at the end of their season who, though a poisonously vivid scarlet, would grow no larger than a thumbnail. Our inexpertise reasoned that tiny did not equal edible, and we ignorantly left these perfectly ripe little jewels for some lucky squirrel or deer.

Once enlightened by our hosts, we've been all-too-eager to pounce upon the first glimpse of red, purple or blue within the bushes along the trails. Mostly, this has been succesful (early elderberries are apparently only meant to be made into jams) and yesterday we feasted on bruise-colored blueberries by the pond. This morning, we stopped mid-run to devour miniscule juicy raspberries, barely pausing to brush off the occasional insect resting on those plump little seeds.

With the better weather also comes the daily rainbow, and for the first time in my life, I have seen the full arch across the sky, as though that elusive end were really just over the hill and in the apple orchard.
For the fourth of July, Lee and Kirsten invited us to their friends' house for an annual effigy burning party. Almost all of the guests were art professors and colleagues from Bennington, Cornell, and Ithaca, and many of the effigies were cardboard representations of academic buildings or dean's offices. Lee and Jasper made a giant beaver, and David and I burned a happy earwig, whose population boom has made them so ubiquitous even our cats don't bother chasing them anymore.
This unusual summer has very chilly evenings, and I've taken to reading books curled up with a cat and a sweater, and a warm mug of tea. I've started to listen for the animals at night, and recently I've heard a small pack of coyotes, but I'm mostly listening for bobcats, whose cry is apparently indistinguishable from a woman screaming. There were half-eaten moths hobbling all over our doorstep yesterday morning, and that kind of strange carnage can only mean bats, so we're going scouting for them tonight. I've heard you can throw up breadcrumbs and they'll come swooping down gently like seagulls.