Our neighborhood would be very quiet during the day if it wasn’t for the teams of gardeners coming and going, mowing, pruning, trimming and blowing, rain or shine. No one ever uses a broom or a rake, preferring instead to use mega-watt leaf blowers to dry and blow away the cut grass. Several of my neighbors are also focused on cleanliness, and frequently power wash, sometimes for hours and hours at a time.  Luckily, I am very good at blocking out noise when I work.

This evening was one of the first warm nights of the summer and from the sounds of it, everyone was outside eating and drinking, including us. When picked raspberries at the back of the yard (3 cups! Whoo Hoo!), I could hear conversations from several different neighbors. It was nice to feel that there were people nearby, relaxing and enjoying themselves.

But the raspberries…. The berries that started to mature in the last week are small, squishy, and impossible to pick. A few larger, sweeter ones are now getting red, and those are the ones I picked this evening. Although there are lots of hard green immature raspberries, I don’t see many new flowers and very few bees anymore.  A few weeks ago the canes were full of bumblebees, fertilizing the flowers.

Okay, enough about the garden. I had some extremely inspiring and entertaining drinks with Max and Eva late this afternoon, where we talked about developing the creative voice, alternate careers, the importance of alternate identities, dance fights, the difference between make-believe and delusion, and cleavage.  They gave me many outstanding ideas, most of which won’t necessarily fit the format or style of this blog. Max even offered to rewrite my blog posts that that they are more “interesting”. I laughed, and sent him my fava bean post from last week…he did a great job.