I've been so focused on robots this summer, I haven't had any time to get together with my movie friends. But yesterday we all got together for lunch and a chance to catch up on the news. They all have assorted numbers of grandchildren, so we went through the obligatory cuteness and genius stories (since I haven't seen Baby Violet in a while, I couldn't contribute my own braggadocio). But then we got into a rousing discussion on the internet and how it is affecting peoples' brains. Sounds somewhat bizarre, but it is the topic of the book all the teachers were required to read over the summer. Anything involving technology is always interesting to me, but I noticed my tendency to contradict everything they were saying. I think I have too much of my Dad in me.
While I was teaching at Ranken the past two weeks, Bruce was rebuilding the handrails on the back porch. I use the term "rebuilding" loosely, because he ended up almost totally recreating the entire back porch. The previous porch only had a wooden handrail on one side and it was rotting away. The other side had an ugly pipe for a hand rail with years and years of flaking white paint. The new hand rail looks so fresh and pretty. It's a great complement to my serenity garden and the trash can patio.
I've also got 2 new tomatoes and several little flowers on my vine. Maybe we'll be able to get a second BLT from this plant before the summer is over, though as slow as the last one was to ripen, I may need to look up a recipe for fried green tomatoes. It's also that time of year for the Resurrection Lilies to pop up. These flowers are nicknamed "surprise lilies," because they seem to bloom overnight right in the middle of the summer when everything else is starting to fade from the heat. I'm noticing them all over the neighborhood, but I just have this lone one in the back yard. The thing I notice the most in this picture is how scraggly the wooden fence is looking behind it. Bruce needs to quit working on the house, because every time he makes something look glorious, it puts the things next to it to shame.
