Hummingbird morning

It’s a beautiful morning. It’s only 55 degrees F., but I can tell from the smell in the air that it’s going to be a lovely day.

Today’s my mother’s birthday, and I’m going to make a Cambodian dish – lok lak – for dinner. I’ll most certainly require some help in the preparations, but my stepfather will be only too happy to help; it’s usually he who does the cooking, and he’s going to want to be involved, I’m sure!

Yesterday I met my new grand-niece for the first time… She’s a cutie, the daughter of my nephew, who has FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome) and his partner. It’s fascinating to see kids with a kid. I don’t feel old watching them, curiously, they just seem so young!

My main activities at the moment are trying to get organized in yet another new place, and turning my head toward the rest of the summer. The organization part is the most difficult. I’m sleeping upstairs, which I requested, and for the moment am having to go up and down on my butt. But I’m determined to figure out how to do it on crutches without falling and breaking the rest of my limbs!

Meanwhile, café-clopes out on the screened-in porch (the screen is necessary; I have NEVER seen such huge mosquitos!!) while gazing out at the still lake. Bob’s little triangular garden patches are doing well. We had French radishes with dinner yesterday and there is fruit in the kitchen for breakfast that comes right from their garden too. There are millions of birds flitting around and burbling, and hummingbirds come from time to time to sip from the feeders hung a few feet from where I’m sitting. This nature is so different from the Perche countryside, just as the Perche in no way resembled Cambodia’s outback. Northern Minnesota is even different from Maine. The variety of evergreens is astounding: the roadside is crowded with more kinds of pine trees than I could ever begin to identify.

Loons call out across the lake and, if I’m very lucky (and still) a deer or two will venture near the house to try to get a few bites of some young, tender plant in the garden – much to Bob’s dismay!

Time to go shower and get ready for the day. It takes me about four times as long to get ready, as I learned in the Perche… I had to get up at 4:15 a.m. to be ready to leave at 5:15 to catch the train to Paris. Ah, well, the “petit matin” in the Perch is well worth getting up for!

XOXOXOX

B