This was a quiet week! Pick up a cup of your favorite beverage, and I will tell you about it!

Thunderstorms, lots of rain, and then mosquitoes! If our tri-city area is avoided by the expected rain, I and the Scampers will have to stay indoors after 8:00 p.m., so that I can avoid having insecticide tracked into the house and gazebo.

The majority of my photographs, this week, were of dewdrops and raindrops on grass that was much too tall. It finally fell victim to the lawnmower on Sunday afternoon. We are expecting rain and thunderstorms again this afternoon and then a scattering of the same throughout the week. I had to unplug my desktop computer and my recharging stations throughout.

Between the high humidity, warmth, heavy pollen, and molds in the air from the proliferation of powered lawnmowers, I have been taking quite a few midday naps and often falling into sleep before midnight. The blue wild flax flowers have been abundant, considering that I did not replant them, this spring. The cluster of plants is a former thin spot in the garden plot where the seeds planted themselves, to pick up where they left off, once the ground became warm, wet, and welcoming.

Thaddeus

I am not getting anywhere on my college Book Club questions. Reviewing the first two chapters (the reading assignment for the first two weeks), I’m quite certain that I do not care to, nor should I try to, alter any of my habits, right now. I believe that they came about because they work. Perhaps, I could quit setting an alarm to get up in the morning, since I usually wake an hour or two or three before it rings. Nah! Not really! The section on corporate ethics and development of personal habits was interesting. It brought to mind how much out of step I have become over the past three or four decades—right down to ideas and vocabularies—with the outer, peopled world of television, radio, movies, magazines, and general advertising.

When I stop to think about it, as I was growing up, the television was on only for the news (and NASA space shots) and select musical variety shows and plays on public television. Movies had to be preapproved (by my father, who was the projectionist at the small-town movie theater, Sunday school teacher, and member of the church choir). We attended live classical concerts, college musicals, opera and theater performances (local opera and acting companies, three colleges within close driving distance), and spent a lot of time, singing, practicing our musical instruments, and accompanying our siblings. Also, being school band members and singers in school and church choirs. And class plays and “declamation” and musical competitions during our school years. (I once saw Dame Judith Anderson and her traveling company at NDSU, putting on Medea and a selection of scenes from Macbeth. I think that was during my junior high school years, ’cause I’d already read both those plays by then. That was breathtaking!)

I sold stationery and greeting cards door to door in order to have enough money to attend a one-week, high-school/college band clinic at Bemidji State University in August, every summer. That, and selling magazines door-to-door to raise money for new high school marching band uniforms, was an almost unbelievable range of interactions with people that I would never otherwise have had a chance to talk with and get to know. (As far as people contacts, both of my parents were egalitarian in principle and lifestyles.)

A total aside, here: I woke up from my nap, this noon, to the sound of my mother (who died in 2016) outside my door, telling me that she’d just fed the cats. Which we both were allergic to, and their last cat died in the 1990s, I think.

Thanks for dropping by! I’m looking forward to spending my awake time dropping at your place for coffee, while my husband attends a workshop for volunteers in the next town and I’m avoiding the sprayer planes. Hope you’ve had a wonderful week!

Hugs & best wishes,
Lizl

My thanks to our host, Allison, whose Weekend Coffee Share blog post and Link Party can be found HERE!