We may be old retired people, but we still have to get out there and mow the lower forty, as we call it.  E has the relatively easy part, riding around on “the Pony” for an hour and a half, while I lug the small push mower up and down hills and around trees.  We almost need a hay baler, the grasses get so tall and thick.  I see why goats are popular here in TN.

Here are some flower scenes, and last night’s beautiful sunset.

My grandkids and I have discovered the wonders of private kid chats on FB.  It’s addictive!  I’ve been at it most of the day, exchanging silly emojis, stickers, and conversation of sorts.  It’s fun to see them learning their way around communicating via texting.  It’s almost like learning a foreign language or code, for both parties.  It’s not quite like being there, but it helps to feel connected.

Meanwhile, my son is learning to deal with a childless house and a routine that’s now blown wide open.  He has to learn to reestablish a whole new, balanced lifestyle and discipline, minus the limitations and constraints of a full household of clamoring demands.  It’s just as challenging, in a different, unfamiliar sense.

I barely made it outside today, what with all the chatter, but here are a few sample sightings.  If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was early autumn.

Yesterday evening we had one of those crazy pop-up t-storms, which means drinks on the rain porch.

This makes me happy–my son hanging out, working from here, and sharing our erev meal.  Plus taking some flower photos together (though his are much better quality).  (Yes, one is a little red mushroom.)  I hope this becomes a habit!  It feels more like a home.

Part of the challenge of photography, especially with a lame excuse for a camera, is to find the hidden gems right in front of you during seasonal off-times and limited subject matter.

Just as in the dead of winter, when there are always stark, dramatic contrasts and subtle tones to be found, there are times in summer in a boring startup garden when you have to dig deeper for new angles and textures.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  (Plus the clever use of the few editing tweaks I have available!)

Not to drag out this hackneyed nature metaphor for finding the potential in bleak emotional spells, here are some attempts at finding aesthetic interest in common, mundane scenes, with limited tools.

A typical weather day in TN?  There is no typical.

One minute it’s a sunny humid 90 degrees.  Suddenly, there’s rolling thunder, and a solid sheet of rain is coming at you from the west–you can see it move across the field like a shower curtain.  In just a few minutes, the temp drops twenty degrees, to 70.  It’s windy, pouring, rivers, thunder and lightning.

Next thing you know, it’s as if it never happened.  That’s a typical day in E. TN.

A perfect day for sitting on the porch with a beer.

Our friendly neighborhood cat often pays us a visit.  Here he is, luxuriating in the coolness under the bench on a hot evening, playing with action figures, after enjoying a supersized water.  What a simple life.  We could take lessons from him.

Lots of pollination is going on.  There’s a baby pumpkin hanging on the fence.  Birds, mammals, and lizards are procreating right outside the house.  One day recently we watched a huge raptor devouring a small mammal in a tree.  It’s a wild time out there.

I find the natural world so much more balanced and well-adjusted than the devolving human one these days.  And yet we’re rushing to destroy the environment we depend on for life.  Fortunately (or not), nature always fights back to ensure its survival.

We have a nice new front step, courtesy of E’s carpentry skills.  It’s practically a mini-deck!  Always a work in progress, down here at the hacienda.

Check out all the flowers taking over the fences, attracting more wild bird species every day.  Once the birds get more used to me, I’ll be able to photograph them.

I think my role in life has become this: reliably, predictably boring but still here.  I’ve had enough misadventures for two lifetimes, and now it’s the part where I finally just commit to something once and for all, for better or worse, and become stable.

There’s something to be said for non-eventful.  Less drama and cost.  Many people never grow up, but I’m working on it.

If nothing else, I hope to leave my environment wilder and more natural then I found it, a place of refuge for endangered species, including a few rare humans.  You know who you are.

Here’s your morning glimpse:

This seems crazy, but I had to harvest my pumpkins in early August!  Their vines dried up, and they seem to be ready, prematurely.  My seasonal sense is all thrown off, here in TN.

The good news is, I suppose, that the same blight or whatever it is killing off many of the vegetable plants is also slowing down the avalanche of yellow squash!  I was running out of new, creative uses for the stuff.  The freezer is already crammed with it.  I can’t even give it away.  What was I thinking?!

Ironically, the zucchini, normally an invasive fiend, is also drying up.  How do you kill zucchini?!  I think the soil here is questionable at best, but nothing I can’t fix over time.  Not like I’m going anywhere.  I appear to be planted here, as well.  Like plants, I can’t just up and relocate, except through my progeny, scattered to the winds.

Speaking of seeds, here we have (surprise!) more flowers, some new baby oak leaves that look like flowers, and said pumpkins.  Weirdly, the seeds from that same Ohio pumpkin also produced a couple of gourd-like poser freaks.  Nature, gotta love it.

My son did eventually make it home, though not uneventfully.  And later in the evening, as the sun was setting in a gorgeous sky, he dropped by on his way to a night out in the city.  Just before he got here, he encountered a spectacular double rainbow in the rain.  Maybe a good sign.

We had a beautiful visit, in which he filled us in and caught us up on recent events and thoughts.  It will be a difficult transition, but not without some relief as well.  As long as we’re all still together in TN, I hope he will always feel at home with us, his family and friends.