It was no mere peach.

It was nectar of the gods, enveloped in a fuzzy blanket…

all the best parts of life with a hard candy core…

childhood giggles and drippy chins…

{Too much, right? Too much.}

I have no photos of this peach from the day we picked it. It would have been tacky to photograph myself swatting my children away from the last few bites of the first peach of summer. But y’all, it was so good. It was grocery-store sized; none of the rest {still on the tree} are that big. I don’t know if it’s just been chilling there so much longer than the others, or if the first one is like the sweet promise of young love…

{PULL BACK. PULL BACK. OVER THE TOP.}

I do, however, have some photos from the rest of summer’s funness.

Exhibit A:

If I gnosh her nose right off her face it’s because I absolutely adore freckles.

A sweet friend gave me this vase for my birthday. {Yes, you’re correct, 29. Perpetually.} It’s short and squatty and all the handy as the bitties have a fondness for picking flowers at the most inconvenient of stem lengths. We try to focus and discuss this propensity, but you know, they’re putting all those hormones in the milk and the chickens now and kids these days…

 

We’ve had visitors a-plenty, and don’t you know I put them to work.

{If you’ve made it this far would you please observe the leaky post? Gross, right? Totally gross. Soooo it’s sap. And it’s always there. Except when I get so grossed out that I clean it off but it just comes back to mock me, and how. Sometimes only hours later. Anyway, is there something I can do about this? Perhaps I should use this new thing I keep hearing about, schmoogle, maybe? Ah, someday I’ll check it out…}

Back to the lecture at hand:

No newsletter digest this month, people. It’s because I don’t like you. Or maybe more because I’m slap out of bitty-less free time. Probably that. It’s probably that one. No complaining, okay? Eat a peach, hug a neighbor, and wear your freckles with pride.

Here’s to hoping your Memorial Day weekend was oh-so-fab. I spent much of ours trying to train the bitties to begin every question with the word “dad, and made a cobbler with all the this:

In other news, bitty G thinks you say “chips” when you should say “jinx,” so setting up sequences in which we say the same word at the same time now occupies much of my waking hours. And with the other waking hours I’m fast on my way to covering the entire fence in blackberry bushes, as promised.

The green beans are all cute and babyish.

I kind of want to snuggle them, but geez, aggressive.

They’re a little out of control and had to be forcefully lifted off the edamame with some bamboo sticks and green rubber tie. They need to TONE IT DOWN and have some nachos.

{Sidetracked? Perhaps.} Green beans…blackberries…PEACHES! I haven’t updated the peaches!

Clearly they are Taylor Swift fans and were pleased with my “welcome home” playlist a couple years back. {In case you missed it, it was a tough call between some classic rock and 1989…but 1989 won out, because, well, ‘Merica.}

My family has invented a new game called “Let’s Say All The Gross Things.” It’s probably pretty self-explanatory, but permit me to indulge…

Someone {a bitty} proposes said game and someone else says “YEAH!” {the other bitty} in a non-car-allowed-level-of-volume-voice. They then proceed to ping pong off the other, each trying to top the last participant’s gross thing.

“Peaches with boogers on them!”

“Cockroach pizza sauce!”

“Earwax candy corn!” {That’s daddy. He’s impressively gross when pressed–just as one would expect of any reliable frat boy–but we giggle and wrinkle up our noses because we love him and somebody’s gotta pay for all the library books we lose.}

“Banana Laffy Taffy!” {That was me…could you tell??}

Invariably, someone yells “EYE BLOOD!” and then it’s all over, and the snowballed descent into chaos sweeps through the backseat.

Ah, summer, welcome back. Gimme two weeks and mama’s gonna need a vacation from this vacation.

{Can I get an amen?}

Chips, you owe me a Coke.

I know the shtick around here has been the fall gal/gardener disaster/attack of the rabid rabbits/Nitrogen fiasco/thieving patio squirrels/{need I go on?}

But so far this season, things are going quite well.

I don’t know what to do with my hands.

 

Or what to write about.

 

So we could just sit here awkwardly, or I could show you some pictures.

Let’s go with that.

Know those days when you just need a purple cauliflower to finally show up?? No? So that’s not, like, a thing?

I had one of those days, and it showed up at just the right time…not late…not early…on time. And now it looks like this:

I texted a picture of it to two kind-hearted friends last night. They probably rolled their eyes and giggled but WHO CARES DID YOU SEE MY PURPLE CAULIFLOWER.

Also:

Dear sister,

Do you remember that time I went out of town in February and you took care of these cauliflower starts for me? See, you didn’t kill them.

Love, Holly

Kindergarten is over and I can’t talk about it. So to distract me from curling up in the fetal position and crying, we went to Leiom’s house. His parents love vowels. Obsessive love of vowels. Good thing I am familiar with such a malady, as my neighbors are huge fans of consonants.

The purple pinecones are out in full force. {Lookout, Joe Gardener, joke poach…} I bought new jars and lids and that grabby thing to get your jars out of the boiling hot water to avoid some mishaps I may have almost gotten myself into in the recent past, all thinking I would make some jam… Problem is, some of the berries have to actually make it inside the house for that to happen.

First tomato showed up yesterday!! It’s so cute and tiny and not at all ready to eat but I will look at it on my counter all day long today and hope for thousands more. Bitty E felt the need to remind me last night that, “I don’t like tomatoes, mom.”

{And where’s this “mom” stuff coming from, anyway?? What are you, 10?? YOU ARE NOT TEN AND IT’S NOT EVEN CLOSE and bitty G dropped the “Holly” the other day, too. Timing seems about right–I think I remember her older sister pulling the same game around age 3. “And what would you like, Holly?”

“I would like to place a very large brick on your head so you will quit growing up, that’s what I’d like, thank you very much. And some more pretend tea will also do. Two sugars, please. And it’s time to reapply your bwackberry wipstick; you must have licked it off.”}

I’ll wear her down eventually…about the tomatoes thing. And I just learned of a man who grows thousands of tomatoes on his driveway, which means I’ll also eventually wear David down. My HOA might be a different story, but I’m coming for ya… Mua ha ha.

This is getting way long and if it ever had a point, well, I lost it way back somewhere in Leiom’s pool. So just one more, I promise…

Because if that’s not evidence of collusion, I don’t know what is.

 

Never fear, the birds still ate all my blueberries.