Today has been a bit of another Nope day in all honesty. Recognising that recovery is very real and very necessary and very much an Okay Thing is great: being able to implement that recovery is – I recognise – a luxury and a privilege. But summer is here and a photography/art project that I have been joining in with for a past number of years is a great motivator for me to not wallow when I’m feeling very much below par. Today’s prompt word was “wet” and as I sat drinking my coffee in the (thankfully) late morning sunshine I saw the flowers covered in raindrops and remembered the thunder and lightning that had freaked me out last night. (Oh yeah. Last night…! As I was about to take a finally sleeping Erika to bed and go to sleep myself I saw a flash from outside and panicked a little because it looked like someone had taken a flash photograph of the house from outside. At almost 2am. Slightly unnerved, I waited hopefully for a rumble of thunder but didn’t hear anything. Took Erika into the bedroom and there was another flash and I tell no lie I was starting to feel pretty scared as I lay on the bed wondering if I should wake Steve, trying to convince myself that it was massively unlikely that there was someone outside, and wondering if perhaps I’d finally slipped over the edge and this is what psychosis was like, seeing things that weren’t there. Then thank God there was a triple flash and finally a really really quiet rumble of thunder and I finally remembered to check the lightning tracker and I stopped panicking and was able to go to sleep!)

It was lovely out this morning, warm but not too warm, humid but not uncomfortably so, and I noticed a lot of new flowers open that I’d not noticed at the weekend.

There are now four irises outside the main window in the suntrap there,

The roses against the workshop wall and in the main flowerbed have started to open,

These things (dotted loosestrife) have flowered and there is now a whole bank of bright and very assertive-looking yellow flowers on their green bodies,

and the butterflies and dragonflies (and bitey bugs) were out in force and this little orange thing settled briefly in front of me.

Then I remembered I’d actually gone out to pick a stalk of rhubarb as well so I collected that and went back in, exhausted already.

It took all day to make a batch of rhubarb scones. Distracted really isn’t a strong enough word to describe me today. Somehow I managed to feed the kids, change nappies, untangle arguments, even play on Minecraft, and eventually made a batch of scones and got them in the freezer (trying something I read about, freezing them unbaked, so that I can take a couple out and have them freshly baked instead of microwaved of a morning!).

When Steve got home with the usual gratefully-received bag of groceries we unpacked and headed outside to breathe for a bit. Conversation turned to compost as I brought out the overflowing kitchen scraps (the kids have got through a bunch and a half of bananas in a day) and as I turned a bit of the compost over to cover the scraps I noticed it was actually steaming! Our first real attempt at composting and we’ve got it all damp and hot and steamy!!! It looks amazing already. The plan is to turn that heap a bit at a time as I add kitchen scraps and other small amounts to it, and hopefully it’ll all be turned by the weekend ready to start a new heap in the vacated bay with the weekend’s grass clippings and the rest of the already semi-rotted leaf pile. Once the new pile is almost complete, we’ll turn the old pile over one last time into the final bay to finish, so that the middle bay is ready for the fresh pile to be turned when we’re able to.

Of course Erika came out to investigate where we’d disappeared to and as is now her habit she helped herself to a small bucket of water to have a play with the small water cannon. And got herself a tick in the process, as usual. But she amazes me. I love/hate that she knows the drill so well already that she stays so perfectly still and relaxed for Steve when he removes ticks from her, or deals with cuts or splinters or bumps or bruises. This girl, as Steve says, she plays hard, loves hard, and knows when she needs fixing. She is amazing.

And then tonight. As I was about to move her to put her to bed I saw her face was illuminated by something and I couldn’t figure out what in the room would be that bright. It was the moon! But when I looked out at the moon I also saw the earth, our globe nightlight reflected in the window, and then I realised that I could also see Jupiter (it’s a white dot over on the right – and not the reflections on the vase on the sill) as promised!! Absolutely blown away and of course I have no idea where the tripod is anymore else I would have tried harder to take a real proper photograph of the scene. But my little iphone picture will have to do, it’s only for memory’s sake isn’t it!