A turning point

Yesterday at 6 am I was sitting in the kitchen having a stirrup cup with Roger and Candi. Sophie had a morsel of leftover bacon and we drank strong Starbucks. They were headed back down the road to Missoula.

The pace of summer slows. When John left the house earlier at 5:20, it was dark. As in really dark and cool and quiet. The season is changing.  We had our little Seattle heat wave last week when everyone suffered nobly for a few days, but it won't even hit 70 for the rest of the week.  Or probably for the next 9 months. 

This is the Season of the Dahlia and Begonia.  Late bloomers. Planted in February, poked at constantly, new sprouts knocked off by an impatient gardener digging down to "check," exasperatingly slow to start growing but now in the prime of floral glory-- just in time for the first cool rain to wreck the plants.

Speaking of rain, no precipitation in Seattle now for over a month. I've poured so much expensive, metered, city drinking water on the flower beds just so we would have a few fancy, useless things to show off in late summer. Enough extravagant clean water to bathe a Sahara village for a year, but this is the unfair world we live in. How lucky can two people get? Beautiful flowers and beautiful friends.