This morning my inbox told me I’d published a new post. I hadn’t. I refreshed the blog, checked the dashboard, and there it was: no post. In the past couple of weeks my email tool has now sent out a “new post” notification with no post attached, twice. Grrr.
If you stayed subscribed through both phantom emails, thank you. I’ve had a brutal few weeks and haven’t found ten minutes to file a complaint with MailerLite.
Quick update
Last week was a heavy one. My family held the funeral for my aunt, who was sweet and well-loved. Her children hosted the shivah — the period of home visitation after a death, when family and friends gather for prayers. For those mourning, the yahrzeit — the remembrance prayer said in honor of the person who passed — is part of that service. If any of that isn’t familiar, I include the brief gloss because I think you deserve to know what a piece of my week looked like.
I also went with my husband to an important medical procedure we’d been waiting months for him to have. This week I’ll go with him to his new doctor to get the results and the next steps for treatment. That’s the short version of this week.
The basement, still ongoing
I’m making progress on clearing out the basement — slow, lumpy progress, but progress. The hard part is the old clothes from my working days in New York; putting them in a box is even harder than moving a sofa. We also have big items parked in the garage while the basement is renovated, which is its own brand of chaos.
So far I’ve given away over 800 items to the Buy Nothing group in my town, and I’ve made what feels like a small pilgrimage run to Beverly Bootstraps Thrift Shop, The Second Glance Thrift Shop, and Savers. How did I end up with so much stuff? Still an open question my therapist hasn’t billed me for.
Next on the donation list: a brass sword that was presented to my father in high school by Demolay, the young men’s leadership division that feeds into the Masons. I’m trying to reach the Masons in Gloucester, MA to see if they’ll take it. Fingers crossed.
While the life stuff happens
And yet. The one thing in my life that is not currently on fire is the garden, so let me at least open that door for you. The daylilies have been blooming in waves since June, and I only captured a few of the varieties — I have more than I can photograph in a summer. Missed the first one? The cover above is the reds I shot while the light was still kind this morning.
Two of my oriental lilies, smelling wonderful enough to be mildly unreasonable in July:
And the roses, doing their thing on schedule:
I’ve planted so many separate beds that photographing the whole backyard is a losing game. The sunnier half looked like this today:
Forgive the hose on the ground. The shadier side is where the hummingbirds run the garden — the dead branches on the hemlock tree make perfect perches. My favorite hummer keeps coming up to me, stopping, and staring straight into my eyes. I have a video of the encounter, but it’s too long for the blog, so it sits in the editing pile.
If you’re enjoying your own summer, I’m glad. If yours is running a little hot — procedures, funerals, basements, or just the weather — this is where I say: take the slowest version of the week you can manage. The stuff on the shelf doesn’t care, and neither do the flowers.
A note from the editor
Automation is supposed to save me time. Instead it sends me phantom pings at seven in the morning and I sit at my desk in pyjamas, clicking refresh like it will fix something. But the garden, at least, is telling the truth this month. That’s enough. Less shelf, more glow.