Picture Of The Day

Last night I took Mr F outside with me to replant the peas and peppers we'd been growing in little pots on our driveway. The seeds were from the library; they let you 'borrow' seeds if you promise to bring seeds back in the fall, and we did that.

Our backyard is overgrown with all kinds of stuff planned and unplanned. Somewhere in there is a blueberry bush. There are two apple trees that haven't borne fruit yet but maybe that's because one was once bitten in half by our neighbor's dog.  There is a sort of path with a few bricks marking it; I mow that path once a year. There are large trees looming over the whole yard, thick untrimmed lilac bushes lining the yard, and the tree Sweetie and I moved to the middle of the yard when we first moved here because my dad said it was growing too close to the house and would undermine the foundation. It is very pretty when it flowers, that tree. It was not flowering now.

In the old wagon with flat tires that I've turned into a planter a pumpkin vine is growing. It keeps flowering with those soft, melty orange flowers that pumpkins are before they are pumpkins. There is, beyond that, an abundance of what would be weeds except that I don't mind them being there.  A weed is any plant you don't want growing where it is my mom said once.

We replanted the peas and peppers and went to get the hose. There was a big spider on the hose, so we uncoiled it carefully, me holding Mr F by the hand while I unraveled the hose.  Mr F is almost always held by the hand, outside.

We got the hose undone and Mr F turned it on and we tugged and looped and dragged it back to the new plants, past the chair and the little truck and the patch of orange-y flowers that somehow ended up growing in our backyard by pure chance, and then began watering, lightly, the new plants in their recently-patted down soil in our backyard.

After they'd had a bit of water, we stayed outside playing "hose," spraying each other with the hose and making it spray up so it felt like it was raining and giving each other "soakers," which is where you let the water run right on someone's head full blast, and shaking the hose around to make patterns in the air with droplets.

The sun wasn't setting yet but all the trees around us made it seem like it was.  You could only see a tiny bit of blue sky directly above us, and everything else was lit by soft light filtered through dark thick leaves that made the light zig and zag and zig again just to reach us.  By the time it hit me and Mr F and our water, it was soft and gauzy.

Just before we went in, Mr F took the hose and pressed his thumb to it and made the spray go out in an arc, like a wall of mist forming a giant circle of spray around and above and behind him, almost at head level.  It was like he had a halo of water droplets, all lit by the faintest last light of a summer day.

I didn't have my camera on me but that didn't stop it from being the picture of the day.