Married!

Just Married

What a beautiful weekend of catching up with old friends and watching your brother marry your new sister. Our whole family is so happy about it we just don't know what to say.J was a great flower grrlI got to sing a Daniel Johnston song

Solstice State of the Garden

Bergamot, maybe my favorite plant.

Echinacea, blooming and on the way

Herb Buddha in control as always

Cobalt (at least that's what I call it) getting ready to go off.
This cool new silver I got last year but I forget the name. I want more.

Update

This picture shows you everything you need to roast your own coffee: green coffee beans, a popcorn popper, wooden spoon, timer, notebook, and the newest dwell in case you have time to read. I pretty much just stared at the beans jumping around in the popper, though. Those beans cooling in the colander are the result of my first attempt. I am far from a coffee connoisseur, but I read somewhere about how you can buy green coffee really cheap and it keeps longer than roasted coffee, and it sounded fun. Haven't tasted it yet, but it smells like coffee, so I'm optimistic.

What's going on? This weekend, the little brother is marrying a real sweetheart of a babe. I was trying to find a poem to read during the ceremony but we couldn't find one that fit, so they asked me to play and sing Daniel Johnston's "True Love Will Find You in the End." Such a cute song for a wedding, I think. I bet all crying babies will stop and listen while I play.

Not much else is going on, the way it should be. I put up a hammock on the sleeping porch off of our bedroom and it's a super cool place to read. I'm also looking forward to the Saturday of the Pitchfork music festival.

Anyway, keep making the most of your summer.

Small Town Rodeo

The summer fair season hadn't quite started up yet last weekend, so I had to travel a little farther than usual to find something fun for the kids. I didn't even know they had rodeos around these parts and was a little skeptical so when I heard about this'n in Monroeville, I had to see it.

Praying Cowboys

And it was pretty cool. I'm not sure what I expected, probably just a few cowboys going through a sham rodeo. Instead, though, it felt like an actual competition. I guess there's no way to fake getting on the back of a bull and trying not to get killed. Because of the high fences, it was almost impossible to get close enough for good photos, though. This image is the closest my kit lens could zoom.

Girl Texting her Prayer

The people watching was pretty good, too. Lots of country-mouse tweens on parade, which is always funny to see. Such posturing. Rodeo Clown's Last Smoke

This picture isn't so great because he caught me focusing. I could have been a lot closer if I'd kept my cool, but I had two kids with me, and that makes it tough to be a sneaky photographer.
This clown's job was not to spook the bull away but to provide a hokey play by play. He had a head set and cracked insults between the time a cowboy was thrown from his bull and the next one was released: "That bull must be related to OJ Simpson . . . He doesn't want to go to the pen!" And people would laugh. More bizarre was this "insult" he delivered when the emcee was introduced: "Hey, it's one of the actors from Brokeback Mountain!" That one got a big laugh. So, apparently, even portraying a gay cowboy in a Hollywood movie is enough to set you up for ridicule in these parts. And the 10% of the cowboys who were gay all thought to themselves "Gosh durn it, don't he know those comments just kill me on the inside?"

Anyway, something to put on the calendar for next year, definitely.

Summer Hours

School's out, so MonkeySquirrel will be on a summer-
occasional-photo-blog-schedule. I was so lazy the last few days. It took me almost a week just to get our last Netflix in the mail. But summer is here, and big plans are in place. Today, for example, I was supposed to buy guitar strings and go to a rodeo, but I took two Benadryl for this terrible hay-fever season and I forgot they knock you out. But now I'm awake, and it's time to get to work enjoying the work free season.

The movie that sat around was Old Joy, something I got just because it has Will Oldham in a starring role and a soundtrack by Yo La Tengo. A very quiet, pretty thing, this movie. Kind of a Raymond Carver or Ann Beattie simplicity on the surface. I just can't decide if it has as much beyond the surface. Anyways, have a nice summer.