Good Monday to you all!

I hope the weekend treated you well.  Ours was a slice of pie – heavenly and ever so good.  The fact that I actually made a pie being the veritable cherry on top of it all, indeed.

Our weekend began in earnest on Thursday evening, as my former students and their friends came for dinner, an ever so brief game of gnome bowling (much more boring than anticipated), and lots and lots of top notch conversation.  Broken record alert – I am so very proud of these young men!  They are  unremittingly kind, smart, thoughtful, and funny.  I feel ever so lucky to have them in my life.  Oh, and Matt, if you’re reading, you were the inspiration for the pie.  After talking about it, I just had to have some, though mine is nectarine, not peach.

We spent our Saturday with new friends who feel quite old (but not at all elderly).  We have so very  much in common (crafting, gardening, a love of nature and more) and the conversation was just so easy, the best combination, really. They have a gorgeous place in the country, full of flowers, wildlife, and beautiful vistas, the very place I’ve imagined when I fancy a Cooper-Sohn retreat in the woods.  Add to that the fact that we had delicious food, the company of adorable and sweet children, and a fire under the stars, well, you know.  It doesn’t get much better.  Thank you Twists!  Oh, and p.s., if you’d like to see their lovely home and the beautiful things Beth makes, I’ve added the link to their blog – My Heartstring under friends.

Yesterday, oh yesterday I spent harvesting lavender.  Which sounds much more pedestrian than it was, I assure you.  Maybe harvesting isn’t the word I want.  Picking?  I don’t know.  In any case, I spent ten hours (no exaggeration) removing the fragrant spent buds from the stems clipped in our back garden so that I might make some sachets.  I never imagined it would be such an undertaking.  I watched  bad television, four movies, wore holes in the thumbs of a pair of rubber gloves, and felt as sweet and sleepy as Dorothy and the gang in that field full of poppies.  Cross your fingers that the end product will be worth all the labor.  I will most definitely post pictures if it is.

For now, it is a picture of pie, another blissful weekend gone by, and a happy week to come.  Let’s enjoy it!

Another p.s. – this is post 401!  How about them apples?