Here's a bee taking her Sabbath rest inside a Rose-of-Sharon bloom. The garden is its usual jungly self, here at almost the middle mark of the month, and very mosquitoey, which is why I haven't been lingering out there much. I go out to pick things for dinner and get munched. But there are a lot of pretty things blooming just now.
And a modest number of edibles are coming in as well. We've had homegrown zucchini on several occasions lately, plus homegrown cucumbers. The other night I made a little baked oatmeal thing with blackberries, because I had just the right amount to put them in something baked. Tomatoes are not doing brilliantly, but I do have one ripe cherry tomato at the moment, and yellow tomatoes on the vines, not quite ripe. I planted them in containers again this year, and that probably wasn't the right thing. They did much better last year in the ground. I also have a lot of lemongrass, which is a sign that I should make Vietnamese beef again sometime soon. Unfortunately I can't report that it does that much to repel mosquitoes, but it is nice to cook with.
Yesterday I vacuumed the whole house, which needed it desperately, and also dusted. Then I went out and cleaned the front porch, vacuuming up dog hair and old pollen, vacuuming down cobwebs, wiping down the front door and doorframe, the windowsills and frames, and the wood framing around the screened porch, all of which had accumulated an unbelievable amount of grime. It looks so much better that it's kind of a constant reminder of how bad it did look, but it's good to be on this side of things, not that side. I really should have done it weeks ago, but should is a toxic word, and we're going to try not to say it to ourselves.
I did all this not looking for any kind of reward, but I got taken to dinner anyway, at the brewery in Belmont. I was very grubby, so went to some lengths to bathe, wash my hair, and dress for a summer date night.
It was the perfect opportunity to wear my secondhand Not Perfect Linen Cinnamon Rose Leila dress again. Once again, I didn't style this dress. I merely wore it. It's too hot for styling things. I did carry my olive-green bag, though, which is a nice color combination with this and many other of my dresses, so that was something, even if I didn't really think about it.
I also remembered to put on lip color. I've worn my Burts Bees "Peony" lip color with this dress before, but last night I thought I'd try the bolder red --- "Zinnia?" I can't remember what it's called.
It's really not that bright a red, and by the time I took this photo it had kind of worn off, but I liked the effect a lot. As you can see, I just keep wearing these silver transitions sunglasses as a default, so it was nice to have some extra color in my face.
Today's high is 97F. BLEAH. I mean, welcome to summer in the southern United States, but even we who are kind of used to it, genetically and experientially, think this is gross. I like warm weather. I love to bask in the sun. But this weather, when you can sit on the front porch in a stupor with sweat running down the inside of your bra? Not so very much, thank you.
So I think I'm going to change my Sunday-Mass dress plan. I'd thought about wearing a skirt and top, but with the weather like this, what I want is something that is not going to touch my skin any more than is absolutely necessary to cover my body. There will be plenty of time in the fall, when it's still 85F every day, to wear skirts and tops. But a day like this calls for desperate measures.
Wearing:
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Smock dress (S/M) in Dark Blue-Gray (I think), bought December 2023, last worn July 5.
*Trades of Hope silk-cotton kimono, bought May 2024, last worn on Thursday
*Xero Jessie sandals, bought 2023. Been a good while since I last wore these --- I mostly wear my thrifted Crocs when I want to wear non-Birk sandals.
For the coming week, when the highs will be in the high 90s through Wednesday, with a break in the heat toward the end of the week, here's a very quick sketch of what I might wear, in no particular order and no effort, right now, to think of whole outfits:
*Wool& Pacific Brooklyn
*Wool& Beetroot Brooklyn
*Wool& Marine Blue Maggie
*Wool& Aegean Teal Maggie
*Not Perfect Linen Chocolate Brown Leila
*Flax purple linen skirt with Eileen Fisher pink merino tank
*Christopher&Banks off-white linen-cotton skirt with Flax periwinkle tunic
I'm not even looking at my closet to see what's in there that I haven't worn. I'm thinking strictly of the heat and how to beat it --- which dresses can I wear and not die of heat stroke? That's the One Question. I hope to go to some daily Masses this week as well, in which case I will simply pop a skirt on over any very above-the-knee dress I might happen to be wearing (Brooklyns, mainly. I think Maggies would work all right as is, even though they're above the knee).
And now I've got to walk the dog before it heats up out there any more. I am glad, as always, to reunite with this dress I'm wearing. It's truly a favorite. I'm so grateful to have it.
I also really like the way that, with minimal effort, I have light-dark-color-pattern going on in my outfit (so, some styling), and my shoes contrast with my lowest hemline. No color repeats in this outfit, though the subtle white stripe in my kimono is a little close to my shoes. The Crocs might have been a better choice from that standpoint, but it's been a long time since I wore these Xero sandals, and I'm not about to change my clothes now.
But really. I've got to walk the dog.
EVENING UPDATE:
About to make some Vietnamese Lemongrass Beef for supper, having done some deep-cleaning in the kitchen earlier: mostly I just washed down the lower cupboard doors, which get spattered and dripped on through cooking and coffee- and tea-making. At this point they're really stained and need repainting, and also the paint is wearing off because they were laminate to begin with . . . In my dream life, I replace them with solid-wood flat doors --- no beveling, no Shaker detail --- painted to match the cabinet boxes but polyurethaned for easy cleaning and no staining. BUT at least for now they're a little cleaner than they were.
I also made some rosemary water for my hair and scalp, because I had read that it's good for hair and scalp. Essentially all this is is rosemary tea: you boil water, you steep springs (or in my case, branches) of rosemary until the water is very definitely no longer clear, then you funnel it into bottles to pour over or massage into your scalp when you wash your hair, or at bedtime, or at whatever time best suits you you for drenching yourself with rosemary tea. I made this mostly because I was bored and I could. I have a lot of rosemary.
And my hair is going through a big periodic fallout --- nothing to worry about, I don't think, but it is feeling thin around my hairline and on top. That is not what I want. I'm already making sure I get protein and collagen and sleep and enough calories generally, because deficits of those things all contribute to hair loss (for me, anyway). But rosemary water can't hurt. And it does smell good.
I stripped off my kimono when I got into the car after Mass, but at home, in the house, I've tried something else with this dress that I hadn't ever thought to try before:
It's hot-hot-hot outside, but indoors, in the air conditioning, I tend to want a little something on my shoulders. So I pulled out this thrifted green tencel button shirt that I haven't worn in a long time, and that I thought I really wouldn't like with this dress, since the dress is so voluminous. But to my surprise, I do like it.
Reading Evelyn Waugh's When the Going Was Good this afternoon --- it's a travel diary, easy to pick up and put down. Oh, to travel like the British middle class in 1929, on P&O steamers through the Suez Canal . . . My children, reading Richard Halliburton for homeschool geography, used to say, "I don't think Egypt is really like that anymore . . ." And truly, no, you can't spend a night on top of the Great Pyramid. I don't know whether the world is really worse now than it ever was, but there are things you read about, in works of nonfiction from a hundred years ago, that seem to you, in your own day, like fantasy occurrences.
No comment on the state of the world at the moment. At the end of Mass Fr. Elias exhorted us to pray for our country and to be prophetically charitable in our exchanges with others, especially those with whom we disagree --- and so we will endeavor to do.
And now, because all you can ever do, really, is keep calm and carry on, I'm going to make some Vietnamese Lemongrass Beef.
LATER:
Oh, I did actually take a full "styling" photo this morning, in which I am holding the bag I take everywhere as a default, as though it were a deliberate style choice:
I don't really see myself amassing an entire wardrobe of bags, but here is this one, creating an Outfit Totality.
Maybe I should start hanging this bag in the bathroom so as to photograph it daily with whatever I'm wearing, whether I'm actually going to leave the house (and therefore need to carry a bag) or not.
Am I doing it right? Are we styling?