Perfect days and perfect nights

Taking forever to lay tile in the entry isn’t the only thing I’ve been doing these last two weeks. A lot of exciting things are happening here. There is our bedroom – finally painted and looking yummily relaxing. The living room and music rooms actually look like they should too. And the library is coming right along.

Some mornings I wake up, the sound of crickets still thrumming along outside our bedroom window, and I can’t believe I actually get to live here for the rest of my life.
Somehow, this place makes everything good. Life here is so easy.

The kids have bikes. Three days ago, Jake learned to ride a two-wheeler. Actually, I think he must have known all along how to ride without training wheels because he hopped up on that bugger and took off like he’d been riding two-wheeled bikes all his life.
Two days ago he had his first wreck and practically ripped a hole all the way through his knee. He wears that boo-boo like a badge though. It might be gross, but he got it RIDING A TWO-WHEELER!
Emily, being the thorough little thing she is, has wrecked and skinned her same knee THREE times. I wonder if it may never heal.
And, just so nobody is left out, Leirin had a nasty crash of her own and got some seriously wicked bruises on her belly from being thrown into the handle bars. They’re still all “Yay! We’ve got bikes!”
We were never able to have bikes where we lived before so I guess they figure they have a lot of catching up to do.
They just ride and ride and they never even consider turning on the television until after dark (two of our major crashes happened after midnight and can be blamed entirely on the dark, so now they watch television instead of riding at night). They gather hickory wood for grilling, pinecones for Allie to chew up, blueberries and blackberries from the end of the drive and grapes and figs from out back. Before too long we’re going to have pears and apples. We’re going to learn to make wine. I want to try to do a sweet Blackberry Merlot.

We get thunderstorms just about every day. And every time they’re over, we walk outside to find a rainbow over our house. Perfect rainbows every time, and we’re smack in the center of it. If you go to the end of our street and take a left, just a little ways down there’s a road named Rainbow’s End. Apparently the rainbow has been here for a while.
There are lots of neat little things we’ve discovered since moving here. A porch can make even the hottest days bearable. Nothing feels like summer more than the juice of a soft, sweet peach dripping into the palm of your hand when you bite into it.

Bees build nests EVERYWHERE. Gimli has been attacked by a bunch of ground bees already. His head swelled up into a knotty mess, but he was ok about it. He liked getting to spend the evening inside while we doctored him and monitored his reaction.
My clothesline poles were full of bees. For weeks I tried to get out there and take down the old rusted line so I could replace it and paint the poles but every time I got near it bees would come pouring out of the holes. Yesterday we picked up a can of that spray foam insulation stuff and I filled the holes full. No more bees will be nesting up in my clothesline poles and now I can finally hang out laundry. I love the smell of laundry dried under the hot summer sun, the look of freshly washed linens waving in the breeze. The poles are primed and if I can get them painted today I’ll be ready to hang laundry out tomorrow. By Wednesday night, if all goes well, I’ll be sleeping on sheets that smell like sunshine.

A homing pigeon has shown up here so now I think I have to build a roost. It is not afraid of us, but it won’t let us close enough to touch him (her?) yet. It will, however, walk around in circles about an inch or so out of reach for a good 15 minutes before he tires of that little game. Evidently I find it a great deal more entertaining than he does because I seem perfectly willing to continue walking around in a circle trying to convince him to let me pet him.

Evenings here, though busy, find me sitting on the porch for at least a little while. Sometimes I’ll watch a dry storm light up huge thunderheads off in the distance. Sometimes I’m out in time to watch the sunset. Sometimes I sit on the porch, surrounded by the dark of midnight and just listen to the sounds of the night. It’s so nice here.