Have you ever seen the old movies where they quickly tear off the months on the calendar to show how long it had been between scenes?  Well, that's how it felt to me this morning as I tore  the month of June off of our calendar as we move into the month of July.  It truly amazes me how fast time is passing and the older I get......the faster time passes.

In just four weeks time we will be in mid-summer!  My granddaughter just got out of school for summer vacation.  Before I know it, she will be back in school and I know we won't have had time to do half of what we had planned with her.

It wasn't always like this.  When I was her age, summer vacation seemed to go on forever.  I lived in an old mill neighborhood that was filled with kids my age.  We played hard from right after breakfast to when the streetlights came on at night, never stopping except for meals.  Gosh, in some ways I miss those carefree times, but....no....I wouldn't want to relive them.  It's much more enjoyable watching Sally live these days for the first time and seeing the delight on her face as she discovers the world around her.

So, here I will pray that time has mercy on this old woman and that the days may linger just a little longer giving me a little more sweetness of a summer that will soon be gone.

Today we stayed close to home.  It was Steve's last day of vacation and we just wanted to be alone, together for just a little while longer.  We drove down country roads of Candia and Deerfield just drinking in the sweetness of early summer.  Trees with their leaves full and moist from the rain and drizzle we had had earlier  were shading us from the sky above making our way seem like an enchanted forest where there wasn't another soul around for miles.

The winding roads that we were on passed by old New England farms that looked as they had not been touched by human hand for more than two or three hundred years.  From old colonial, to saltbox, to log cabin, federalist style and early cape, they were all there.  Some had candlelights in every window.  Some had fences of stone standing without wear of years.  There were views of ponds, hay fields and mountains that took my breath away.  To think, all of this had been just beyond our own backyard, waiting to be discovered.

We had placed a CD in the player.  Little had I realized the comforting folk songs of the sixties and early seventies were transporting us to another world that was a secret treasure  no one else would be able to understand or visit as we had.  The closeness between us has  always been there, but for this day we shared the same visions and dreams as our hearts beat as one and we breathed for each other in a love that was beyond anything I have ever known.

My heart ached as I longed to keep this feeling forever, but, reality had to find us again and our lives beyond this came floating back to earth.  How grateful I was for the experience.  It was then that I realized we could have this again and again as we age, for each year brings us closer to a time when we won't have to think about being apart for hours on end.  We will soon be on the threshold of our golden years of retirement.  The preparation that we make now will be the reward we will share together later on.

It looks like the middle of summer here, yet, the official date is still four days away.  With all the rain we have had, it almost looks like a jungle in my back yard.  Everything is so green.  Sometime today I have to get into the gardens and do some weeding before they over take the plants.  My bleeding heart is HUGE!!!  It easily takes up a third of the garden now.  We have had that plant for five years and I'm not sure if it will continue spreading over the next several years.

I'm getting some work done.  Wouldn't you know it......my clothes dryer went on the fritz and I had to take my laundry to the laundromat this morning.  Thank goodness it hasn't gotten hot yet.  The hotter it gets, the worse my asthma symptoms become.  Anyway, that is done and the dryer will be fixed sometime between 1p-5p tomorrow.  So, now I need to put away the clean clothes, clean my floors with the new vacuume cleaner Ben and Rachel gave us as a gift during their vacation with us.  After that I'll putter around the house picking things up and putting them away as I go.

Sally will be staying with us for one more night before going back with her mom tomorrow after school.  Boy, it's been hard getting her up these past couple of mornings.  She really hasn't wanted to go, because it's boring the last week of school before summer vacation.  Her birthday is this coming Friday and I know she is going to want to skip school.  I'll talk to Dee and see what she thinks about it.

Well, I'm not getting any work done here.....so.....I'll stop typing for now.