9th Birthday Party

It has been a long summer without my camera. Since my computer was out of commission for awhile too, there weren't any blog posts. The camera was expensive to fix, so I waited until I really needed it, for R's 9th birthday party. I'm so happy to have it back. It felt like one of my arms was missing.

We had her party at our neighborhood pool.


Suddenly the sky opened up, with rain and hail.




E caught a hailstone.


I captioned some of these pictures to send to family, but I forgot to save a version without captions.

That was a nice birthday memory--a rainbow just for R.

She wanted a wolf cake, with Oreo frosting. It was so much fun to make. She gets to keep the little wolf figurines and play with them. I bought the edible cupcake toppers on eBay.


Then the girls came back to our house for a slumber party. They are picking out books from the shelves D built for me, to hold my Dad's history scholar's library. R has commandeered some of the lower shelves for her own books.

Eleven girls in the basement!

Charlie wanted so badly to go downstairs. But he has a history of jumping on sleeping heads and licking faces.

Poor Charlie!

He got a lot of love in the morning.

The next morning, they opened presents and D made chocolate chip pancakes, the birthday girl's request.

D built this rope swing for R in the backyard. It swings you right into the bushes, and for some reason, every kid who comes over thinks that is just the most hysterically funny and entertaining thing.

It was fun to have a house full of girls for one night. You forget how little fourth graders are, until they are all swarming around you in the kitchen in their pj's, telling you exactly how much butter and salt they want on their own bag of popcorn. 

Rain Garden

A whole night and day of drenching rains, finally. Everything is perking up.

One of the front yard beds is looking better, thanks to my friend Tom and his gift of columbine and snapdragon yesterday. I got them planted just as the rain started falling. The little grassy things are thrift from Tom, I hope they take. Behind that is the pretty white flowers of bacopa, one perennial that came back for me this year. And way in the back, the Shasta daisies. I love the dark green foliage even before they bloom. These came from one seedling I started under lights indoors three years ago.

Charlie gets a wet head from the dripping bushes. Still a handsome gentleman.
Peas planted on St. Patrick's Day, loving the rain.

Magenta Swiss Chard.

Mesclun ready to be planted.

Charlie in the spot where he dug up all the grass. That stage didn't last very long, he is mostly a good dog now.

Georgia O'Keefe in the salad greens.

The dwarf blue spruce planted all around with purple alliums is my favorite thing in the backyard. I wish I could go back three owners ago and say thank you.

Allium and a peony bud in the back yard.
So many things bloomed this year that had been sulky or just absent in the four years we've lived in this house. I think it was the first year without a late killing freeze.

Tom's columbine. I always think of them as blue, I love this creamy color.

I have been planting out the winter sown milk jug seedlings. I'm following the instructions, we'll see if anything actually blooms. That will be another post.
Dandelion skeletons are lovely. I will still work to eradicate them.

Front yard peonies just ready to burst open.

Wild rosa eglantina by the front door. I wish whoever planted these could know how much they are appreciated years later. Who knows how old the gorgeous peony is, how many owners back it goes.

Buds on our Home Depot David Austin rose from last year. I have been fertilizing and watering and putting epsom salts and coffee grounds around all the roses, mostly out of shame for how I neglected them last summer.

April Rain Song 
by Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you.

Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.

Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.

The rain makes running pools in the gutter.

The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—

And I love the rain.

Monsoon Season

I didn't think Denver had a monsoon season, but we seem to be in it now. The ninth straight day of torrential afternoon and evening downpours. I can't get enough rain. I grew up in New Mexico, where the weather never matched the brooding novel I was reading. When I first read Cormac McCarthy, I got a little pang of regret. If only I had read him in high school! I might have seen something romantic and interesting in the high country desert. All that love of New Mexico came later, long after I didn't live there any more.

If there isn't lightning, R and I have an agreement that we will run out into the storm and lie in the grass. It's irritating, because sometimes I am busy and not inclined to get wet. But rainstorms are few and far between, so I always indulge her. Most often the storm ends before we get tired of the wet grass. If it doesn't, we run inside to dry off and read books in bed until the storm is over. Usually we do that once every three or four months. We have both been enjoying the ridiculousness of doing our ritual every single day for over a week. We have gotten through a lot of chapters of Prince Caspian.

Yesterday there was a storm that looked to me like hurricane footage from tv. Sheets and walls of water, trees bent sideways, a river pouring down the street.

Once it had been over for awhile and I was sure the lightning was gone, I went outside to take pictures. The water had been much higher than this. It flooded the lawn and stopped just short of the basement windows. I tried to take pictures from inside the house, but you couldn't see through the sheets of rain.

For the first time I can remember, this storm was something other than, hurray! rain! It briefly turned into hail at one point, and we watched out the windows as water flowed up over the curb and cascaded onto the lawn. The thunder was tooth-grinding, earth-shaking, Charlie dove under our bed and wouldn't come out. That's when you start to think, what happens if this doesn't stop. The streets are flooded out. How is D going to get home? What's it like downtown?

And then the sun comes out, and the birds are singing.

D got home fine, Charlie got his walk and the water was almost gone by then.

We are back to appreciating how much the flowers, and the lawn, love this weather.

R and her best friend E are building a dam of rocks, against the next deluge. R is in a phase of wearing her Easter dress every day. Que sera.

I'm not sure what they mean for the dam to do. If it worked, it would stop the flow of water and back it up so that it flooded E's house across the street.

E told me that this is "the lock where I keep my friendship with R." I love that, because it's not a locket, it's really just a padlock. I asked her, does it have anything inside it? And she looked at me like I was crazy.

Catching up

It looks like I am not very good at blogging in the summer. June has been parties and houseguests and swimming and the garden, but not much of a record of any of it. I will catch up with pictures from the family reunion and visit from my mom and dad (Gammy and BamBam). In the meantime, here are two from yesterday. Her best friend from school came over to swim. We got rained out at the pool, so they came back to our house and played dressup.

Rainy Day Red Balloon

A cool and rainy Sunday. The day was full of memories of our summer trips to Denver when I was little. The light in this picture is how that vanished childhood Denver looks in my dreams. I don't think it's all my imagination. It used to be greener and rainier than it is now.