......

I'VE GOT A GALLIMAUFRY, Reader Dear, on this (yet another) gorgeous day! I'm going to give it to you in one great glob.
Salads: easiest meal ever! These are two that I recently tossed. I think of salads as my works of art. (My yard man thinks of them as pretty good, if they've got some meat, cheese or plenty of peanuts atop).

Tomatoes: easiest vegetable to work into a meal! Soup, salad, sliced, sauced, salsa'd... They're pretty easy to grow, too, sometimes vining right up out of the compost pile that's hidden away behind the storage shed.

Copper Beach trees: always spectacular! (Or at least that's my personal opinion, which is not surprising considering that twenty-seven years ago I coerced my yard man into planting this one that stood half-grown and shimmering in our yard this afternoon. (Yes, Reader Dear--half-grown! When we purchased this tree, on the eleventh anniversary of the day my yard man signed on with me, the nurseryman told us, "Fifty years to maturity!" [He was speaking of the tree]).

Pear trees: at times surprisingly fruitful! Someone planted two pear trees in our yard long before my yard man and I arrived here. A husband and wife I like to suppose.*

*The trees, Dear Reader! I'm speaking of the trees--only one of them has ever borne pears. The other stands near her side and never says a word, but I'm sure he plays a role!



(I had not been keeping an eye on the Mrs. lately. I was delighted when the yard man pointed out this afternoon that she's got a whole crop of offspring. They are kind of hard, wild little things, but more abundant and plumper than most years!)

Horses: sometimes found hitched by fours! I've already informed you that it was a perfect day for lolling outdoors (I did say gorgeous, did I not?) Since my yard man is seldom inclined to loll, he hitched up a quartet of these creatures, and trotted off up the road to work.*
*Work the ground, that would be. At his vegetable patch, of course!




Little Actors: sometimes busy climbing the ladder to success! Other times, as on this gorgeous afternoon, they just want to climb a ladder--any old ladder--again and again. And again! It's where this gallimaufry comes to an end...
......