Some Down Time....

It has been a lovely week and a half or so and it appears things have slowed down just a bit. I even read a couple of books in my new hammock. An anniversary gift from my sweet man who knows me so well. Upon first glance it looks like a re-purposed piece of exercise equipment (it's actually anti-exercise) or some transformer type creature.....but it's a fold up hammock....and is just as relaxing as the kind you tie between two trees. You see...I can drag it under the tree and look up...way up and see.....the underside of the leaves. One can wile away the hours under there with no problem. I was laying in there tonight after supper. I can see a piece of a roof but mostly trees and it feels like the time we spent at Sandbay Resort up north of Parry's Sound. Our cottage backed onto the edge of the woods and I had my coffee and Sudoko on the deck every morning....and read some books. There are lots of things that can take you away when you use your imagination. All that's missing is the silence.

Swimming lessons are done, and with that a lot of the structure of our day goes back out the window. The eating and snacking on time, and being home and going to the library for our daily half hour of high speed. Today it took place after supper.
It's nice though!

I have spent a lot of time SITTING out of doors as well, on the deck under the patio umbrella. It's easier to have some iced tea when you're sitting up....go figure....maybe I need to get those bendy straws out for myself.

Yesterday afternoon Ray and I paddled the backwaters of Strathroy. Wow, what a lot of trash there is in the water around here. You'd fill up a few bags in no time. We carried the canoe from the house to the skateboard park (that drew a few curious stares and drew some ridicule. But in the end....they're just jealous!)and put in there. Then we paddled through the park and all the way to the dam at the conservation area by Food Basics. We turned around and headed back to see how far we could make it the other direction, but eventually it got too shallow, we figure that we probably made it to the back of the marsh walk off Victoria street. Mostly flood plain and a big log jam with all kinds of junk. Things like propane tanks, shoes and scads of empty spraypaint cans. Not very natural....altogether we went about 3 kms, and had a nice outing. No pesky bugs but very brilliantly coloured dragon flies. Those dainty ones of sky blue. Love those and some solid black ones with shimmering emerald bodies. Exquisite. I also saw a wildflower I'd never seen before. That is always really special for me, and I happened to have taken a new wildflower book out of the library, and used it to identify what I saw. It was called "common heleborine", almost orchid like if you looked close enough. If you glanced at it, it looked drab and brownish but upon closer inspection, it had mauve flowers, about 2cm in diameter. Some blossoms were spent and brownish but the fresh blooms were so lovely. It's really neat to learn the name of something...especially a lily of the field, knowing that God took time to create such a thing, give it a name, and cause it to grow, giving it everything that's needed, even in the midst of piles of discarded things. I'll let you draw your own analogy!

I must post a picture of my pots of flowers on the patio soon too. I shall have to relate the story of shamrocks (or oxalis) when I post that.....stay tuned!...but don't hold your breath. It IS down time....