TGIF

Yes, it’s Friday, and not a moment too soon. What a long week; the second one during which my husband has been out of town on business (and home for a mere twenty-four hours in between, poor guy), leaving me nagging and nudging duty exclusive oversight of our teenage daughter. Who happens to be grounded and ill-tempered because her feckless and irresponsible unfortunate habit of text-messaging her friends while driving recently resulted in an unexpected and expensive altercation between axle and curb. Teenagers: can’t live with ’em, can’t lock ’em up ’til they outgrow adolescence. Can you hear me sigh?

At least my daily promenade around the garden is still an effective means to lower my blood pressure. The first geum is in bloom! This division was given to me by a friend two years ago, and it has since quadrupled in size. I’ve added others from the nursery since then, but my friend’s particular patch seems to be of the super-size variety.

More flowering on the sugar snap pea vines, which suddenly seem to have realized that they were planted around the base of the trellis for a reason – that being for them to scramble up toward the ever-warmer sun. I was amazed to see how very vertical they have become just in the last week. There’s nothing more springlike, nothing more encouragingly green – than fresh pea soup.