Wet Boots

 (This is actually a post from a while back, during a wet spring time.  I just finished editing and it posted it as most recent - too much for me to figure out.)

We've had a lot of rain this past month, with last week being especially wet.  Over the weekend we lined up dozens of boots on the porch to dry and be ready for a new week.  On Monday, they were still damp.  Frantically, we shifted our previous boot arrangement; some out to catch the bit of sun that was momentarily peeking in the early afternoon, some tipped upside down, some placed in front of the warm heater, all in attempt to hurry the drying process.

Children streamed in from the bus.  Sneakers enthusiastically tossed underneath backpacks.  Rain pants and almost dry boots slipped on. Noisy, eager children, hardly noticing the dampness, pounded out the door, raced through the raindrops and found the nearest flooded puddles.  Splasshhhhh!  Splatttterrr!   Into the rushing stream!  Over the tops of the boots.....seeping down the legs.....soaking the clean white socks......sopping the barely dried insides of the boots.   "Stop!"  "Wait..."  "Oh never mind..."

             

A Perfect Summer Day

Yesterday was a perfect day. 

 An especially perfect way to wrap up a busy, hot and humid summer. 

10 hours "pond-side" with a dozen children. 

Time and space for each one.

Shooting targets with handmade 

bows and arrows.

Swinging in the hammock,

(with an occasional 

bit of too much enthusiasm).

 Racing up and down the trails deep in far away imagination.

 Working on skits to perform later, after rest.

Competing with our crazy pup to catch frogs along the mucky shore.

It was also a day of a heavy awareness that we are at the end of
something sweet and deeply restoring. 

My scheduling book, set on a blanket, hauntingly nearby, 

just in case I found some uninterrupted quiet time, to pen a few more "to do's" 

...to be ready for what's next.

   

Not that I'm not looking forward to the beginning of school, I am!  

Beginnings make my heart beat.

 Every new endeavour, new page, new song, new schedule, fills me 

with hopeful anticipation. 

 But oh!  

To leave the glory of a day like this....