I’m sitting on my porch step among the pots of annuals I planted yesterday and today – the sunny marigolds, the floppy old straw hat pansies, the stout and gorgeous zinnias in all their deep flaming orange glory. It is a grand evening as far as the weather goes – it is neither warm nor cool, it is that perfect mystery temperature inbetween, with a soft stroke of breeze to boot. I smell smoke – some farmer out leaning on a rake, burning his fields out in the prairies that surround our rural neighborhood.

Birds are calling to each other tree to tree – one chatters, one chirps back. All are singing in their own way, and this pure music is easy for me to feel a part of. My dark blue jeans spill over onto my light blue flip flops, the cement is hard to sit on but I don’t mind. The beginnings of sunset are light charcoal grey and soft peach, pale yellow and faint washed out blue. I can hear Lucy murmuring and singing to herself in her crib upstairs.

The grass is beginning to grow long, the chocolate mint is emerging fragrant in the perennial patch.

I wonder if it will rain tonight.
I wonder if the farmer will finish with his fields.