More bedroom-window roses (in a photo from a sunny yesterday), on their way to being choked by vinca major, but holding their own for now. Let this be a metaphor. These are mostly feral multiflora roses that came up as volunteers elsewhere, and that I transplanted to this sunny spot, where they have flourished.
It's cloudy and a little cooler, with a projected high of 67F.
Trying today to finish reading the Dickinson/Darwin book, to read more of The Voyage of the Beagle, and to pick ED's letters up again. I'm hoping the biographical context the first book provides will help me navigate the letters --- it's a voluminous book, and when I put it down, ED was still a schoolgirl, writing to her friend Abiah Root.
The Abbey semester is almost over. Husband has a class Monday, and then that's it. I think he has maybe one in-class exam, but otherwise papers that he'll whip through fast, to put the year to bed. Hard to believe the wheel has turned this fast, and here we are, at the end of the academic calendar (for now). And on to real life, say we. There's an awful lot of real life around here, just waiting for somebody to have time to do something about it. Or not, as the case may be.
There is plenty of real life, meanwhile, that just does its own thing. Exhibit A: peonies still working on opening themselves.
The porch is covered with pollen, but as we did last year, we might just wait for it to disintegrate, rather than washing it off.
The pollen doesn't show up well in photographs, but let me hasten to assure you that it's there. Fortunately I'm not that allergic to it. My allergies run chiefly to dust mites, with a nice little side of cat.
Wearing today:
Some color and pattern on a gloomy day.
*Wool& Brooklyn dress (S/Long) in Beetroot, bought November 2023
*Secondhand Erika&C. linen-cotton floral pinafore, bought November or December 2023
*Secondhand Birkenstock Mayaris, bought April 2024
I hadn't worn this pinafore in a while --- looks as though Easter day was the last time I wore it. I had taken this Brooklyn dress to Dallas and wore it . . . let's see . . . April 11. It was at the bottom of the shelf stack, at any rate, so I figured it was time to give it a wear.
Updo again. I can't be bothered with anything else. I'm just happy that my hair is finally again at a length where I can do this, without being too much for my available claw clips.
This is just a braid with the ends tucked down, and as much hair as possible gathered into the claw clip, so that the sides don't slip out. It's not fancy, but it's up and out of my way.
In other news, a friend of mine works for a company called Trades of Hope, which isn't not an MLM business, but is different in that it partners with women artisans in potential crisis across the world, to give them a livelihood that will prevent their having to relinquish their children to the care of an orphanage, for example, or sell themselves into some form of slavery. As my friend Susan points out, the chief driver of human trafficking is not random kidnapping, but poverty. Desperate people, and in particular desperate women, see sex work and other forms of slavery as the only way to survive and provide for themselves and their children. So my friend Susan works for this company and spreads their message, to lift women out of the various forms of bondage that offend against their dignity as human beings, to give them real skilled work and a chance to make a living at it, to help them to make stable homes for themselves and their children.
Anyway, she had persuaded another friend of mine to have a little online sales party, as these businesses do. Ordinarily I ignore stuff like this, because if there's anything the world is full enough of, it's mom friends with side hustles, wanting to sell you things and maybe sign you up to sell things, too. But for Trades of Hope I'm willing to make an exception, and to go out of my way to find something to buy. They have many beautiful items --- gorgeous leather bags, for example, way out of my price range at the moment, but something I'd love to invest in at some point. And they have really nice jewelry. Again, it's all made by women artisans, and the point of the whole thing is for these vulnerable women to have dignity, freedom, and autonomy to bring up their children without resorting to desperate measures.
So I probably should have bought a present for somebody else, but instead I bought a present for me:
I've wanted some simple little silver stacking rings for years and really liked this inexpensive set. I can't remember what this gemstone is, or if it's sea glass, but these are made by a woman in India, and they're very pretty. I've been wanting another ring to wear on my right hand, to converse with this moonstone ring my darling Artgirl bought me a couple of summers ago in a gem shop in Asheville. I like the look of all these together. Mostly I'm pretty minimalist in my jewelry, but I do love wearing a lot of rings. My hands are very almost-60 --- they've worked hard, these hands, and they deserve a little dressing up.
And now it's time to deliver the dog from bondage in her crate, to give her the autonomy to, for example, crawl halfway down a drain pipe to see whether anything is living in it, or to eat some unspeakable foulness out of a clump of monkey grass, because dogs, man.
OH ALSO:
Still learning Norwegian. I can ask you how many roommates your grandfather has.
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
Have written a little fiction for a change --- maybe 250 words, but it's something.
Also going through my closet and doing a bit of a cull, as I do periodically. I'm reselling this linen jacket I bought last year, for example --- I want to love it, but it truly is a piece I do not reach for. I liked it better in theory than in reality, on me, with my other clothes. I'm also in the process of cleaning up a couple of pairs of shoes to resell, including the last pair of Xero Cassies I bought. They're so cute, gray with a dark-gray leather toe cap and a teal strap, but they do. not. fit. my feet. And I'm going to try selling my purple Oswego shoes, pricing them low because they've got more wear than other shoes I've sold. I have a pair of charcoal Oswegos that I wear a lot more, now that I have them, and I really don't need two pairs.