Promises, Promises

So, I know I promised photos of the hundreds of peonies at Gilsland Farm, and they will be coming soon.  They haven't quite bloomed yet, but in the meantime, here are a few lovelies tucked into an ironstone pitcher in my kitchen.  I processed them using Kim Klassen's "Just Cause" and "Subtly Yours" textures.

We have been enjoying the most perfect of days lately: warm, but not hot, with dry air and clear skies.  It will end soon, this dreamy spell, but in the meantime there's that optimism to cherish.  Tonight as we sat in the stands at a Portland Sea Dogs game, I got the kind of goosebumps you only get at the ballpark or when you watch a baseball movie, like Bull Durham, which I've seen more times than is probably healthy--maybe 108--just as many times as there are stitches in a baseball or beads in a rosary.  Oh my, that opening, when Susan Sarandon walks to the ballpark, climbs the stairs, and steps into the heart of the stadium, and her dreamy voice drawls, "It's a long season and you gotta trust. I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball."   

Baseball feels to me inseparable from summer.  Sure, it begins in spring and ends in fall, but its soul is rooted in summer, that season of promises--the promise of long days stretching out into impossibly long weeks, the promise of ten more minutes at the pool, five more minutes on the ferris wheel, three more seconds of a very first kiss.  Never mind that when it ends we'll wonder where it went so fast.  For now, summer feels endless, and that is enough.