June in Michigan has been unseasonably cold and it's not really felt much like summer. Also, we've had too much rain and now most of the peonies are lying on the grass like drunken debutantes.

A Peony from Our Garden

This is a peony that my son picked. When I told him that he hurt the flower, he asked it, "Are you alright?" Then said to me, "He's alright, Mama." Then when I put it in water, he said again, "See, he's alright." Can't argue with that logic.

Oakdale Farm.

Looking out my bedroom window tonight, I'm enormously grateful that we chose to live here. The wind is blowing through the branches, rippling the water in our ponds and my son's new inflatable pool, and I can feel the breeze on my bare feet through the gaps between the wide pine plank flooring. Our barn looks romantic through the wavy glass of the window, charming with the slight sag in the center of the roof and the sign that reads, "Oakdale Farm.", as though the name is by itself a complete sentence. For me, I suppose it is. :)

I walk down the stairs with every third step creaking my descent, and see my son still playing in the backyard, driving his small cars in the dirt where I filled in a hole that his puppy dug so deep that I had to use dried leaves and grass clippings to help fill it in. My husband asks if he should bring him inside, it's way past his bedtime, and I look at my boy, so happy in the waning light, with the fifty-year-old white hydrangea swaying behind him and the almost-hatched peonies near his face, and I say, no, let him play.