The Sunflower House

Last Spring, Ava and I planted a sunflower house.  Instread of using one of my raised beds for tomatoes like I usually do, I planted tomatoes in a variety of sunny spots throughout the yard.  Ava and I planted sunflower seeds around the perimeter of the 4 x 8 raised bed.

It didn't take long to see some results..

The end result was a playhouse for Ava and a great hang out spot for the many birds who enjoyed it all summer.

Aloha

Ron, Chris, Chris' friend Eric and I spent a LOVELY relaxing week in Maui in August.  What a beautiful place! 

This was the view out our window:

We stayed in Kihei.  One night we drove up to Lahina and went to some art galleries and had dinner at Cheeseburger in Paradise.

The boys are standing in front of a banyon tree that was so big it filled an entire city block.

Another day we went for a hike at a beautiful state park.

Lots of sunshine, lots of time on the beach and at the pool, and lots of fun!

The Sangria Room Project

Four years ago, after our mom died, Cara and I began sorting through her belongings, taking on the daunting task of deciding what to do with a lifetime of accumulation.  We made decisions together as we went along, but the items like photos, recipes, and letters we set aside.  We just weren't ready to sort those more emotion-laden pieces, so we filled the spare room in her condo and called it the 'sangria room'.  Our plan was to get together some evening, make a big pitcher of sangria and make our way through the keepsakes and memories.  When we sold the condo, we randomly divided the contents of the sangria room and each took our part home to store and do some preliminary sorting on our own.  

Last night, nearly four years later, Cara came over and we had our sangria night. I made the sangria (her wonderful recipe, perfected over the years) and my best approximation of a Dos Padres taco salad.  We sorted through memories and treasures and drank sangria.  We browsed through pictures from our childhood:

 We looked through stacks of artwork created by Mom.  She never talked about her artistic ability but when we discovered her high school artwork after our grandma died, we gave her some oil pastels and a sketchbook and encouraged her to use her talent. She took an art class through the Roeder Home.  She seems to have only practiced her art during those two periods in her life.  Here is an example of her high school art:

Amazing!

 We found little booklets that were dance club programs, from the days when our mom and dad and a group of friends would rent a hall on a Saturday, decorate it, then go home and get dressed up and came back and spend the evening dancing!

We looked through letters that our dad wrote to Mom while he was working in Alaska in the months before they were married--very sweet and romantic.....

Here is a picture of our grandma as a young woman:

and our dad and mom's senior pictures (around 1942 and 1946):

The daisy amus'd my fond fancy,
So artless, so simple, so wild......
--Robert Burns

I Have Just Begun

a lovely little book called "Firstlight" by Sue Monk Kidd.  Coincidentally, I also just received 'Secret Life of Bees' from Netflix and can't wait to watch it.

Firstlight is a collection of her early writings about spiritual things.  I'm still in the introduction, and she talks about the work of Thomas Merton, and how his most famous work, Seven Storey Mountain, was written when he was  a young man.  He later felt somewhat conflicted and contained by the fact that he was in many ways defined by that work of his youth, though his thinking had evolved greatly after that time.  She  experienced similar hesitation when asked to compile works from her past, which may or may not still align with her present thinking.

She talks a bit about the impact his book had on her, and I was struck by this line:

"The book revealed to me the startling reality of the inner life, cracking open a raw longing for the Divine, and exposing an irrepressible hunger for that deepest thing in myself."

Love books that do that........

Ava and her Papa went out to breakfast

 Ava loved her 'mash browns' !

Zoo Day

Turns out 4 1/2 is the PERFECT age to visit the zoo!  We had such a fun day.  Picnic on the grass outside, then on into the zoo, where Ava was interested in everything and loved it all.  We were there for about 4 hours, and still didn't get to everything, so we'll be making more trips down.  She's concerned that we didn't make it to the meerkats......