pretzel

ander and i are still taking a walk in the neighborhood just about every day. it's gotten quite hot, though, as one might expect in july, so we've agreed to go in the morning and generally limit ourselves to the "short" route. one advantage of the path we take is that we get to sometimes see (and hear) ander's favorite neighborhood dogs, a big basset hound named "hodor" and a black lab named "sterling." hodor has a deep, booming bark and a tail that wags almost in circles and if there wasn't a fence, i'm sure ander would not be so enchanted by hodor but there is a fence and so ander sticks his fingers in his ears as we come to the yard just in case hodor is there and if he is, ander stands on the grass and barks back at hodor. they have a loud conversation and then we move along.

but i digress.

what we both like very much about the short walk is seeing the lovely chalk messages. well, i really like the lovely chalk messages; ander indulges me as we admire them and read them and talk a wee bit about what they mean and i take a photo. we have had occasion to see the residents of the house situated most closely to the patches of sidewalk where we most often see the lovely chalk messages. i waved to the girls and told them that i very much like their lovely chalk messages. one of them responded by waving back and smiling and saying thank you.

one time we saw the mom sitting on her front step as her girls played outside and we stopped for a moment to say a socially distant hello and compliment her on the lovely chalk messages and the colorful elements of what might best be described as a fairy garden with plenty of cheerfully painted rocks at the roots of their tree and the origami cranes hanging from some of the lower branches of the same tree. we spoke for a few minutes and then she recognized him from having been a substitute teacher in one of his classes earlier in the school year!

suffice it to say that she and i are now corresponding via facebook and it has been quite enjoyable for me to make a new friend. so when i posted pictures of a delightfully affectionate feline we encountered in front of their house, she identified the cat as their very own "pretzel," who, she assured me, despite his eagerness for attention from us, was in fact very well fed and cared for and tended to by their own family.

so now we look and listen for hodor, sterling, and pretzel. and we read the lovely chalk messages and talk and stop to smell the roses on "our" rose bush (it's really a neighbor's rose bush that grows next to the sidewalk and has beautiful dark-pinky-red roses with a scent that ander describes as strawberry candy and we simply must stop and smell the flowers every time we pass so therefore it's "our" rose bush, you know). and we come home and rejoin the goings-on of our home already in progress.

this photo was from the spring

she also made this sign out of lids and bottle caps