With the onslaught of exams all the world seems black and white. Still, summer will come soon after. So lately I have been trying to look past the newspaper wrapped exterior of life and on through to the summer sunlight of life after exams. 

My new bicycle bell works like a charm.

Today is my birthday. 

Last night I ruminated on 16, and I could hear the foxes bark and the big clock downstairs whirr, and all I could think was that, in the life of a fox, wondering about the future is probably not a prime concern. 

So instead of wondering I decided to grow the fur of a fox and smell the spring in the air.

Courtesy of One-Eyed William.

The Cigar Box

I found this pockmarked cigar box cornered away in the top of our old house, but it went missing after we moved. I discovered it in the basement weeks ago but left it there until I got bored, which is when I decided to make it into a Box for Things.

An inventory of the contents:

1) a small bottle with no purpose

2) a thought on carnies and their strange ways

3) a paper flower

4) a piece of a glass insulator I found someplace

5) a stamp

6) a paper pinwheel

7) a hat pin for self defense

8) a key which goes to nothing

9) a pocket for artifacts of the utmost importance

10) an envelope

11) a pencil (you write with it)

12) a place for files

I guess it could be a treasure box, but it's really just a place to store discoveries or evidence. Or even murder weapons. (See #7)

My first day of school should have been today, but because of Irene and all the floods lots of the roads are washed out, so its been postponed. Now it's on thursday.

So, the summer days are nearly gone. Sitting on the front doorstep, you can practically smell autumn in the sunlight and on the marble. The ducks' bills are growing orange and the guinea hens are coughing "buckwheat!" Their danger alarm is very loud. They are such skittish creatures!

The nights are ripe with echoes lately. Just before bed when I go out to hunt for Pipkin I always like to howl and whoop a little bit.

Now Dad is downstairs singing something which I guess is a song. There are fresh pears in the kitchen which I have to eat!

On the Midway

We went to the fair one night in order to take part in the thrills and terrors that can only be found there. We poked at the oxen and the rabbits and measured up the call ducks to my flock. Also we ate funnel cakes which we later regretted very much after also eating double cheese fries and kettle corn and being swooped about on this ride.

The fair is a place like no other. It's grease and cigar smoke disguised into golden lightbulbs and smooth looking-glass, spindly ferris wheels with swinging cars, bobbing horses with scarlet saddles, striped canopies and the tinkling of the carousel. It is a most wonderful delusion. 

What do you imagine birds flying over think of the fair?

Up and Away

The sunsets have been tres magnifique of late.

I am off to soccer practice! 

Summertime

There are many things in life I don't understand: the curious brown goop in the backyard, at what stage sealing wax is prime for sealing, and the delicate silver lichen that grows on the rocks. How could something that looks so insubstantial be so strong, intricate, and crispy?  What I am sure of is that no matter the place or the time of day, somewhere there will be a patch of quite to think in. Usually there are also flowers there. 

I have collected several such places and this is one of them. The wise old rocks rising in crests from the pasture ground, the barbed wire glinting in the sun, the impression of a hand resting on the moss long after I've gone. It is a place just on the edge of something barely there, and someplace where you could sit for ages, watching, or spying things out, or noticing.

People are very strange. Mostly I enjoy watching them from afar rather than actually approaching them. Isin't it interesting to notice their peculiar habits? Really it's like observing a rare sort of bird or a wild pig! I think spying on a wild pig would be a bit more fascinating than on a person though, obviously. But, you see, wild pigs don't have social lives. They don't have scandals either, or sandals. That's what makes watching people interesting, I think. Their sandals, and also their expressions. Most people are more adept than pigs at making faces, which I am quite good at reading. Although, a pig's sideways glance can speak whole acres.

Hello!

I, Jill f. Brooks, am pleased to welcome you to the new location of Jelly for Bread! I am utterly delighted you could make it. There is something refreshing about a shiny new blog, don't you agree?

Now that the formal greeting is over, we can really delve in!