Just Past the Solstice

It's high summer and flowers are a big part of my life right now, so it follows that most of the pictures I take are of flowers. Hopefully at least some of you are here for this thrilling content! The hotter weather led to most of the heat-loving flowers taking off, like sunflowers and zinnias. That same weather likely led to the worst bug season I have yet experienced. My snapdragons got infested with thrips, which I had never seen before, but there are thousands of them and they crawl inside of the flowers where I can't get them out. Having to throw out a whole crop of flowers was pretty demoralizing, but that's what happens when nature is in charge. The Japanese beetles have been terrible this year as well, stripping raspberry and zinnia foliage. There is even a mysterious tiny beetle that has been eating the zinnia flowers as well. 

No real story to the picture below, other than I was sitting in a chair reading and noticed how clean, light and put-together this corner looked.

Because this is the usual state of the living room. 

We went on "vacation" a few weeks ago to a lake in Virginia. The whole family stayed in one house: 8 adults and 7 kids aged from 1-8. The kids were living the dream while the adults took on a rotation of support roles such as accompanying children back and forth to the house to use the bathroom, change clothes, and get food; sunscreen applier; cook; cleaner; and negotiator. 

I went on a few very brief kayak runs and swam for a few minutes, but next time I will work harder to go out early or late to kayak. Fun fact: This lake is man made and exists only for the purpose of cooling a nuclear power plant. It's fine, I guess. I'm pretty sure the government would never lie about that.

Books, lately. I was so excited to read How to Stop Time because I generally love time-travel and immortals. The idea that someone could experience hundreds of years of history is fascinating. The premise of this book is that there are some people who age extraordinarily slowly, allowing them to live up to a thousand years. With that premise, I couldn't imagine this book would be boring, but it was. The main character spends most of the book pining over his first love who died over 300 years ago. I liked The Midnight Library better, and I still want to check out some of Matt Haig's nonfiction.

I had already read several stories in These Precious Days by Ann Patchett, but I still loved it. I have read some of her fiction before, but I think I prefer her non-fiction. I'm in a little bit of a reading slump right now and I found the ticket out to usually be short stories, essays, or short books in general. 

I don't buy a lot of books, and particularly not new books, but for my birthday earlier this year I bought myself The Flower Hunter by Lucy Hunter. This books is GORGEOUS. Lucy Hunter is truly an artist, using flowers as her medium. Every page is beautiful and inspiring. I haven't done too much with flower arranging yet and I'm excited to try.

This post has been sitting in draft for over a week, so it's a tad light, but so be it! For some reason having a full time job and a part time job kind of takes up a lot of time. I hope you all are enjoying the warm weather (if you're in the northern hemisphere) and are spending lots of time outside!