1. Near Miss: Yesterday the weather forecast called for widespread, destructive storms all across Oklahoma. We expected thunder and lightning, flooding rain, and, I kid your not, hail the size of DVDs. That was a new one. I messaged Jessica mid-afternoon to remind her to park her car beneath their carport and to surrender her garden. As big and exposed as her vegetable garden is, there would not be much she could do to protect it. I gave her, “We’re all in the same boat,” kind of assurances as I gulped against worry for my own gardens. Her calm response shocked me. She recounted the last hail storm and the minimal damage they sustained then, and she described her voluptuous, unruly cucurbit vines, then said, “Honestly? Those pumpkins need to be put in their place anyway.” I died laughing. I am dead as I write this. The storm fell apart and neither of our gardens were pummeled. Her unruly pumpkin vines still rule the day. Cheers to wild Oklahoma weather, wild pumpkin vines, and even wilder daughters.
   
2. Our Dance Card is Full: Handsome is working from home today while I wrap up a solid farm week. Then we will throw ourselves into party mode. Tonight we are hosting about a dozen friends for a little summertime kickoff. Saturday we will take the Batmobile to Edmond for a Touch- a-Truck event. And Sunday we will convene at Mom and Dad’s with local family for Father’s Day. Next weekend all of my siblings will be in the same city for a few days, and we have some big fun planned for that rare occasion! And summertime in general promises lots of cookouts, swim parties, outdoor movies, and adventures.
   
3. Farm Improvements: We are so happy with how some house renovations went this spring, and we are now turning our imaginations and resources toward the south deck and the chicken coop, separately. While it may happen in stages, we hope to dismantle the warped wooden boardwalk near the herb garden and the decking around the pool. We want to replace it with concrete patio, sidewalks, etc. The vision is connect the kitchen door all the way to the bonfire area with concrete and rock, then to partly surround the pool too. We might in the near future sink the pool a few feet underground and replace the liner. On the other side of the farm, the chicken coop will soon get a power washing, some fresh nesting boxes, and maybe a coat of paint. That project is much smaller but perhaps more meaningful. I crave to let the flock free range again, but I shudder at the thought of what they could to my gardens. Light a candle or seven hundred for me.
   
4. Garden Update: Bonkers. Everything is bonkers. I have a big metal trough full of salmon colored daylilies blooming and sunflowers about to bloom, also in that trough. Downhill, basil is growing thick and low like a pesto carpet. Tomatoes, peppers, squash and cucumbers, well, according to Jessica they need to be in their place. Salad greens absolutely refuse to stop. Nothing has bolted yet, thanks to this luxurious June weather. Potatoes were okay, and I managed to grow a basketful of onions, all of which get donated because we are not onion eaters. I am happier than ever with the shade garden. Perennials are really filling in this year, and I made decent choices for annual color. The Mural Garden at the top of our driveway is where I am growing my version of a Four Sisters combo (four, not three, because we have four sisters in our family), and maybe soon I will grab some photos of that. It is so lush and colorful. Filled with both food and flowers. Honorable mention to the Color Wheel garden, friends, because it has kept me on my toes. What a fun experiment!
   
5. Reading Lately: I have a proper book review brewing, but please make time in your life for a novel called The Midnight Library. Also, are you subscribed to Joe Jacobi’s newsletter in Medium? He has fantastic daily journal prompts.

Happy Friday, friends, and happy Father’s Day weekend! However you are able to mark the occasion, I hope your days are filled with abundant Love and that you make some good memories.

One more thing, thank you so much for your kind comments and messages about my first set of people sketches! I am blown away by the richness of personalities in the world (in my life!) and will continue to try and capture them. I wonder if people want to be named or tagged publicly when they are the subject? Please vote.

Carpe this Diem
xoxo

There is a woman who runs marathons and hikes fourteeners and lifts heavy weights, just because she likes it. She is a doe eyed vision of classic feminine beauty who clothes herself in artful tattoos and feasts on decadent food. She buys birthday cakes at grocery store bakeries for no reason, grows tulips by the hundreds, and plants native trees between boulders on purpose. She is devastatingly smart. Retired at a young age from the Air Force, she now works for a company that builds and maintains space stations. She raised her very own woman child who is blazing her own trails in life. This woman is a world traveler and book worm and a self taught carpenter. She is married to the love of her life and secretly has Frida Kahlo as the patron saint of her home office.

A man writes his musings and observations of life and family and community from his deep woods home. He is a hunter and musician and friend to everyone. He once had an almost human beagle whose death broke our hearts. After a decades-long career in the production and sale of electricity, he uses his unmatched gifts of storytelling and insight to lure his audience, connect them to broader scenes and overlapping ideas, and then drill them snugly to his own reality with details of his daily life. We all feel like we belong on his Arkansas mountaintop with him and his bride.

A younger man roams our small town, sometimes on foot and sometimes on his bicycle, occasionally with his aging service dog. She is plump and shimmery, with a silver-gold velveteen coat, cloudy eyes, and a pink harness. She is largely uninterested, or maybe too tired, to meet strangers. But her boy makes up for this. He knows everyone, and everyone knows him. He waves with his entire arm and shoulder, twisting at the waist as he does. He has huge blue eyes and an electrifying, joyful smile that is easily seen from a hundred yards away. He wanders and explores all year long regardless of how stifling hot or frigid cold the weather. His smile is unmistakable even from within his parka and insulated hunter’s cap. Seeing him sometimes puts me in the mood for a family reunion. Sometimes it makes me cry.

A woman floats gently in my imagination and lives concretely in my husband’s world. She is terrifyingly smart with a brilliant, crisp intellect, and she is an insightful writer and scrupulous editor. She is too accomplished for her young age and is ethereally beautiful. She proves, year after year, that motherhood can extend to our little brothers and our grown nephews and even, in the way that life is circular and treacherous, to our fathers. She could be my sister or my friend if we all had more time. She represents so many ways I once thought I could be or become. She has no idea how much I once feared her or how much I now admire and appreciate her.

Once upon a time there was a man who spent his youth enforcing the law, solving vice crimes, and running with a motorcycle gang in order to save young girls from being trafficked. He was an avid house remodeler, a craftsman and gardener long before everyone took those ideas from television. He raised a young family, lost his marriage, and spent that long middle chapter of life on a series of beautiful, tragic romances. He was a first responder at the Oklahoma City Bombing, a tragedy which fully altered the trajectory of his life and mental health. He retreated. Became almost a hermit. Healed a little, enough to reopen his life to old friends and new lovers. He immersed himself in Native American culture. In need of rescuing himself, he stayed in touch with two of the children he had pulled from the rubble of the Murrah building, now grown, perhaps more his than his own children. He bought a herd of bison and repaired fencing as a form of meditation. He applied his considerable talents to renovating his beautiful, private retreat. This man, having already lived twenty different lives of his own and filled with the wisdom from all those mistakes and experiences, showed us as newlyweds how life could be for us, too. After a long stretch, he died alone but within his paradise. He is forever in the fabric of our family’s collective memory, a much loved and unforgettable personality.