Summer Strawberries and Fields of Daisies

I kept my youngest home today for various reasons relating to school activities and philosophies, and such a lovely day we have had. We made bread. I promised the kids that I would make homemade bread as soon as I was off for the summer. It's something my eldest reminisces about often: those early years when I was at home with them and fresh bread was a daily ritual. He is old enough to remember getting off the school bus to a thick slice with butter which he would eat in the kitchen with his younger siblings as he told us about his day. I've been back at work full time for 7 years now - as long as I was off with him - but he still remembers.

Today is the first day of my summer break, and I forgot how pleasurable it was to knead dough in a morning kitchen, with the light pooling across the butcher block counters and red tiled floors. Grace helped, and while it was rising, we went hiking through the back fields. There were wild strawberries, sweet and miniature, and we ate them as we went, hugging the shady perimeter of the field to avoid the sun. Another week and Grace and her sister can go back and collect them, though I doubt there will be enough brought back to do anything with. May as well eat them warm and ripe off the vine. Grace said if she was magical, she would grow a wild strawberry vine outside the kitchen door. Now that's using your magical powers for good.

When we ran out of strawberries, I told her stories from the legends of Arthur.....surprised somehow that she hadn't read some of my old books of that period. Arthur. Gawaine. The Lady of the Lake. Excalibur. We will look through the library to find some if the volumes I have packed away somewhere.....at least one of which I hit from my Aunt's childhood collection when I was about the age Grace is now. 

And we meandered home picking wildflowers.....daisies, buttercups, clover....a bouquet that now sits on the table reminding us of this perfect morning.