Odds and ends

Black-eyed Susans...























...Black-eyed Edie.


The first are part of our organic farmshare. In addition to each week's vegetables, you can cut your own herbs and flowers. And so now we have fresh bouquets around the house all week. There is nothing like being kept in perpetual fresh flowers to make me feel pampered. The share is worth it for that benefit alone.

Edith's black eye is not the result of a daycare scuffle, thank goodness. Shades of her Uncle Peter, it's what the mosquitoes do to her tender skin when they bite her just under the eye. As you can see, Tom is letting her self-medicate to regulate the pain...






Blueberries for EMEL


More berry picking! This time, blueberries, for which New Jersey is famed. We went in the company of Edith's friends Harrison and Desi and their parents. Within a few minutes Harrison was getting the concept of picking only the blue berries and leaving the green. Edith was still munching away on the unripe ones. So I put her down on the ground where--shades of her literary predecessor Sal--she found a much quicker and easier source of berries. (No bears, though. It is New Jersey, and I guess they've all been hunted. You'll have to ask Uncle Peter about that.)






Never judge your mother until you've walked a mile in her shoes.


Edith is into putting on shoes and socks these days. Preferably, into putting hers on us and ours on herself. She holds out her toddler size 5s just in front of our feet and waits for us to slip our toes in. Last night she started buzzing her lips whenever I wiggled my toes. Don't laugh--she's very earnest about it.

At this point we think she's destined to be either a shoe salesperson, a naturalist, a stunt double, or the next sound effects guy on A Prairie Home Companion.