The Last Piece of Pie

First of all, I'd like to tell you all how much I appreciate and cherish your support with the whole blog issue. Please bear in mind that no one is telling me to take down the blog--only that one post--and the photographer actually seemed more interested in being given credit and having a link posted to his Facebook page than he was in having it removed. That being said, I'm reading the handwriting on the wall and taking these first steps on my own. If anyone chooses to snag any of my photos for their own nefarious purposes, so be it. That's what you get for posting stuff on the Internet. Once it's out there, it doesn't belong to you anymore.
But I digress...

There's something rather sad about July 5th. The parties are over and the fireworks are done, their charred remnants littering the yard like stinking cigarette butts. It's especially nasty if it rains before you can pick up the mess. For once, it didn't rain, but we did have a few bottle rockets that didn't quite make it off the launch pad. I'll admit to not enjoying the show much since I'd just received the email about deleting that infamous photo. I wasn't paying much attention, and I was actually shaking.

The Fourth had begun as a great day for me. Sam and I cleaned the house in the morning, then I went to the store, came home, and started cooking. There are a lot of people who say they hate to cook. I am not one of them. There's a certain creativity to cooking that is similar to writing a book. I came up with a couple of new recipes, which I will post at a later date, and I enjoyed every minute it--even washing the dishes afterward.

Sam had asked for a chocolate pie for the Fourth, so, for the first time in ages, I made one. He cut it into wedges and served it up himself. The next day, he had pie for breakfast, then asked if he could have another piece. I said, "Sure, go ahead." He ate it and went off to work. I looked at that pie, still sitting on the table and saw it as a thing of beauty. The meringue was over an inch thick--even thicker than the pie filling itself. So I took a picture of it.

Then I looked out the window and saw a rabbit nibbling the grass between the piles of wood left from having the dead tulip poplar cut down. My trusty watchdog, Peaches, was snoozing on the deck not twenty feet from that rabbit.

I realized then that I hadn't taken many pictures of the yard this year. I'd gotten so used to posting hunks, I hadn't bothered. So I went out in my nightie and slippers--the horses neighed at me thinking I was coming to feed them--and I took some pics.

The phlox is especially pretty this year, particularly since the climate has been more like England than Indiana. Those yellow flowers were supposed to have been cosmos, but when they sprouted, they looked so much like ragweed, I almost pulled them up. I'd compared the leaves and seen a very slight difference, so I let them go. And they bloomed! I'm still not sure what they are. Can anyone identify them?

This tree lily is at least three years old and had never bloomed. Needless to say, it was worth the wait. I can smell it anytime I go out on the porch.

These are some other tree lilies. Not as spectacular, perhaps, but certainly more prolific.

I took a few more pictures, mostly of the dead tree in the back yard. I've been slowly shuttling the pieces small enough for me to carry in my wheelbarrow over to the woodpile on the other side of the house, but some of them are too big to budge. Budley counted the rings and determined that this tree was forty years old, and the oak that we also had to cut down was sixty. I guess we can blame their deaths on global warming--or at least last year's drought. Either way, it makes me very sad.

So, after taking one more picture of Peaches,

I went back in the house and ate the pie.