The adorable Miss Pettitoes says GOOD MORNING Girls (and Jake)! ♥
It’s hot isn’t it, hot hot hot. Going to be 97 degrees in Boston today. The daytime is useless to me now. Or, actually, I’m useless to it. I can’t seem to move until the sun goes down.
After dinner last night we walked out our screen door into the dark, and, because I have become voyeur/photographer extraordinaire, (no neighborhood is safe from me ever again), I get to bring you along!
Under the old trees that arch over our narrow little streets is a bit like being under water, splotchy moonlight comes through, all soupy and green in the soft air and humidity. I thought, with the “heat dome” as the weatherman is calling whatever this heat thing is, you might enjoy a cooling walk in the dark. Grab a little sweater and let’s go!
Because I wanted to give you the true feeling of the night, I didn’t use a flash on my camera . . . and in order to do that, one must be very steady, and apparently, obviously, one is not. Just wanted you to know all the out-of-focus isn’t YOU. (Want music while you look at this? Click here, leave it on, while you come back to this page. . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM2Xa4RUBCk and tell me if you ever get sick of this song because I just will never get sick of it! I’ll probably sing it all day now!)
Off we go . . . Joe’s asking if I have my camera! Yes, honey; click, I do, darling.
Ahhhh, a breath of fresh air, a breeze came from the harbor, only a block away. Now we realize we’re whispering . . . it’s so dark and quiet, we think we might be invisible. No one can see us, only hear the muffled crunching sound of feet on pavement as we head down the street. Could be a squirrel, couldn’t it?
As soon as I was old enough, the heart magnet of New England, started drawing me toward the island….My inner self knew I just couldn’t live life without being near houses that looked like this . . . ♥
Our neighborhood offers probably the same thing any neighborhood does on hot summer nights, exactly the same kind of thing I got when I was a girl walking ’round and ’round our block in the Valley, under the stars, trying to figure out life with my best friend. ♥ And up in the sky, the same old moon looks down on us . . .
Nothing’s really changed, it’s still the best kind of quiet; the sounds of domesticity that make the world seem right; the clinking of the dishes being cleared up, bits of music drifting from windows, people in rocking chairs outside with yellow porch lights and a halo of moths. You can’t see it, but we could look up into windows and see old wallpaper; into screen doors, and down halls lined with family photos. All of this works especially well when you’re invisible. Saw a kitty on a window sill catching the harbor breeze.
There were lightening bugs along this fence I was hoping to capture for you, but they’d blink and I’d snap, missing them by a mile . . . all the way down the street they seemed to follow us, under the hydrangeas, in the ivy, in the darkest places, little blinks of fairy light flitted along with us. ♥
Our walks always take us down to the harbor, where the boat comes in….to hear the water lap on shore (pretend you hear it, it’s instant cooling!). See all those little boats tied up there? They belong to sailboat people who’ve come into town off their boats that are tied in the harbor to have dinner. They could trail a hand in the water as the boat motors to shore. I think they do. I would. Doesn’t that sound like the perfect life? At least for one night?
And a half block up is the most wonderful ice cream store, Mad Martha’s, famous on the island; we each got a cone (I’m having a pistachio yen this summer, Joe goes for coffee chocolate chip; we are both sugar-cone aficionados :-)) and we brought a whole different kind home, because my next post is going to be a recipe for the most amazing, almost criminal, ICE CREAM SANDWICHES. And that’s it, we’re almost home now, but not quite . . . first we were serenaded . . .
We pass the church across the street from our house, just in time for choir practice…out the doors, the music comes, just for us . . . And He walks with me and He talks with me and he tells me I am His own . . . up to the sky it went, musical notes that looked just like stars.
And then, up the back driveway . . . and home to the Heart Magnet . . .my own personal ground zero. And that’s it, a night in the ‘hood. Come back for some ice cream later girls…until then, stay coooool . . . xoxo me ♥
