While singing "Summertime". Preferably while decorative persons are fanning us with large fans.

My mom's ex put in a big fan for me...I guess I can't call him Bag of Hammers anymore, hmm?

I don't know where they're from, but the apples in our fruit basket at the moment are addictive. They're light-flavoured, firm, and hard enough not to bruise, yet my fingers dripped with juice when I sliced one over my cereal.

I crush the crispy flesh with strong crunches, enjoying the feel of the rub along my gums and the almost-polish on my teeth. There's no sharpness; the sun has warmed and ripened them to sweet perfection, and although they have been inside for days, something of the summer sun seems to have stayed with them. Every bite is a kiss.

Am, that's lovely! I wish I could digest raw apples, damnit; they always look so good.

Here's one, because I'm staring out my office window down into my garden, even as we speak.

The Witch's Garden

At the heart of the garden is a bush of English comfrey. It wasn't supposed to thrive in the California climate, but somehow, a small triumphant miracle, it comes back larger and hardier very year, throwing out small purple flowers.

The herbs surround it, rosemary, sage, basil, seeded oregano. There are flowers, as well, long-stalked roses, spectacular beared iris.

Guarding the heart of witchcraft are the trees, the sentinels: peach, apricot, fig, blueberry. The figs are huge and green, the peaches small and hard, the blueberries succulent. We're still waiting for the first apricots.

They are my perimeter, my protection.

edit: and erika, you have mail, bebe.

Received and replied, though go ahead and respond to my profile address...The yahoo one. Because the spam filter delivers the spam and not the messages from my friends. Grr. Argh.

A second fruit drabble:

Mulberries. The adults hated them, messy weed trees. The birds loved them and showed their love with purple streaks down the sheets on the clotheslines. The berries were sweet but flat, needing more sourness, more character.

I am sitting in a mulberry tree. I am foraging for food. I am a survivor of a shipwreck, about to meet Robinson Crusoe. I am a more adventurous Jane, finding food in the African jungle. I was tied up by counterfeiters, but I wriggled free and am making my way to the cops. I am a purple-tongued, sticky, freckled Indian with blonde-streaked braids.

Just spent an hour and a half editing the Lucy manuscript.

Call me Susan the Adverb Slayer.

Indubitably.

t snerk

There are still quite a few left in the text. Like Buffy, I can't stay out of bed with the enemy.

Call me Susan the Adverb Slayer.

Seriously?

I like adverbs just fine. I just don't like them when they're filler instead of meat.