Gentle June

June is the best month of all. June is the month when 18 year old Hermanito can finally doze outdoors on the warm cement behind the deck. He is nearly blind now and we are doing that dance with the vet and special care to give him pleasant days. Just when we think he will fail he rises again. He is part of our history. Moved house with us when we left Orenco. Owns our hearts completely and knows it. Today he was comforted with the sweetness of a perfect June day.

"Sheer Bliss" roses on the table following last night's Solstice Party with our friends. More about that later.

John's sugar peas are topping 9 feet now. They tried to make a lunge for the ground the other day but I subdued them with 2 rakes while John bound them back up with twine. They are ripe along with about a million strawberries.

Dozy poppies, swaying among the purple kales.

Buttery "Graham Thomas", lording it over the pathway so that it's a danger to try and pass by. Mercurochrome for my wounded forearms.

"Touch of Class" looking superior in her tall, proud form, not one bit ashamed of the fact that her perfume is somewhat underwhelming.

Plenty of rhubarb for this fanatic. I froze 3 quarts and made a big pan of crisp for our gathering.

We had 9 good farming souls over to welcome the long sweet days of summer.

Everyone brought a dish or two. Chavo brought a tray of beautiful food and made sushi as we watched.

He has a wonderful technique for rolling the nori that is brilliant and much easier to eat than the 'bite-sized' pieces that are too big for one bite and fall to pieces when you try to bite them in two.

Simply put, he rolls the sushi into cones with all the ingredients piled inside like a nosegay of flowers. They are so easy to handle!

Fried tofu, various greens, sticky brown rice, rice vinegar, carrot sticks, tempura sauce and a dollop of guacamole completed the arrangement. Mmmmmmm.

Little Tao surprised us all by crawling for the first time as we watched him. There's nothing better than watching a baby take his first ambitious tries at a new skill. Think of the bravery of taking that first step in your life. We were all, "go, baby. Go!"

Beautiful boy. Pass him around and let all the elders have a smell of his brand new self. Chavo showed us an amazing thing; the Mongolian triangle. On his little butt, just above the fold, is a bluish area of skin that is on every dark skinned baby until they are about 6 years old. It looked like the color of a bruise and was about the size of my palm (smallish). Did you guys know about that? We laughed about knowing about the Bermuda triangle, the fertile triangle and so on but that we'd never known about the Mongolian triangle. I love learning odd new things, don't you?

Then today I went to Linda's for a critique with Andrea (above), and Serena. I didn't take work this time but we had a lively discussion about why you should put the stories behind your paintings into words and we tried to help each other see what was working well in each others' work. This was a follow up to the Artists Statement workshop and why the rest of the group did not join us.

This rose is "Heritage", a heavily fragrant David Austin that begs to be inhaled with eyes closed. So many beautiful roses. So many beautiful friends. Each unique. What a fine and mysterious life this is; what a heavenly creation.

Edit: If you Google "Mongolian Spots" and click on images you'll see a wide variety.