Buckeye of Flourish

Technically I slept for 8 hours, but there was a break in the middle for an hour or so when I lay awake with a tummy ache and various anxieties. The Sparrowhawk had to go over to church and put the new inserts in the Order of Service booklets, as he does every first Sunday of the month. I planned to go with him and help, but when I woke up, I felt pretty wobbly, 8 hours or not. I stayed at home, nursing a medicinal cup of tea. This Sunday, the minister was rolling out the labyrinths, which she had painted on giant sheets of canvas, with some help from volunteers. There's one big one for the adults, and another that is shaped like a sea turtle, for the kids. I like the idea, but unfortunately, for me the whole idea of a labyrinth draws its power from being embedded in the earth. It should be a path marked in earth, in stone, in growing things. Canvas atop a linoleum floor in the social hall just doesn't work for me. So I was of two minds about going today anyway, and just as glad to stay home.

I continued to feel wobbly, but I was determined to help with the other job of the day. The Sparrowhawk's half-brother Fritz and his wife Peach (she's from Georgia) were stopping by on the way home from visiting their grandson in Wisconsin. On Fritz's birthday in May, a plan was hatched to help him put together a book made up of the little meditations ("devotionals," they're called by Lutherans) that he'd written based on his travels among the small towns of Michigan. The Sparrowhawk has been working hard on this project, formatting and printing off proof pages for Fritz to look at. We knew they'd have come all the way from Wisconsin, and still have a couple of hours more driving to get home. I wanted to have dinner ready to go so they wouldn't have to wait too long.

The Sparrowhawk planned to grill some steak. I made potato salad, using the yummy fingerlings we got from the peach farmer last week. We had a couple of ears of corn, but the Sparrowhawk did not realize that you can't leave sweet corn in the cupboard--it has to be refrigerated! So the corn wasn't good enough to eat on its own. I cooked it and scraped the kernels off the cob, and made gluten-free corn "pudding," It came out more like a very moist corn bread, because I never tried the gluten-free method before. Peach doesn't eat gluten. She ate quite a lot of this and said it was good. I picked a nice batch of green beans off the vines in my garden and cooked those, too. Then I made a salad with lettuce, peppers, and cucumber. The Sparrowhawk fried some mushrooms, and when the guests arrived, put the steak on the grill. The table was all set and everything else was ready for them. We had peaches and ice cream for dessert. Fritz took the proofs home to look over. I got to see pictures of the grandchild, who is the most darling boy I've ever seen, outside my own immediate family! We are both pretty tired, but feeling victorious because everything worked out and they went home happy. There's not much cleaning up to do, because I did everything ahead of time, wobbly or not.