Too wiped even to think of a title.

This blog is likely to be photo-heavy in the weeks (months?) to come, and light on words, because I’m immersed in the book.

I love other people’s photo-blogs anyway.

Gratuitous nasturtiums photo.

I really don’t have it in me to craft elegant prose tonight, having spent the afternoon digging through land records and censuses. There is nothing quite like the feeling, I must say, of scanning a census for one particular name and finding another family you recognize, all their names and ages looking right up at you, this young woman you spent last week tracking listed there, twelve years old, living five households away from the boy she will grow up to marry. Five households away!

Other tidbits from today:

More yard work in the morning before it got too hot. The oven winds are blowing; the grass is suddenly crunchy underfoot.

I found a plastic fish in the weeds and Rose cleaned it off and filled a pot with water for Huck and Rilla, and they spent an hour floating their fish in the pond. Bare feet, water splotches on patio, chubby legs crouching. Love.

Rilla wrote a letter today “To the Fairys. A Ladybug or a Fawn.” She was rummaging through the kitchen drawer looking for a stamp when I happened upon her. “Oh good, Mommy. I need you to write the address to mail it. With my pink pen that also writes in pink.”

I’ve been reading mostly nonfiction lately, much of it research-related, but today I wanted a respite from facts and I picked up that delicious morsel of a book, The Uncommon Reader, which I first read a couple of years ago. It’s a quick read and was even more delightful this time around.

I did not plant these. They just grow. Rilla says they’re hers.