Good morning! I was dreaming I was sick; I think it was cancer. Mary Jean was a teaching assistant in a class for young children, like preschool. Other people were sick too. Maybe it was a futuristic epidemic. When I woke up, I felt achy and congested.

Yesterday morning, I baked muffins (apricot) and tidied up some to get ready for the Small Group Ministry coming here. We had decided two weeks before to do a field trip, so I didn't have to plan a topic for a discussion. As people arrived, we gathered outside and I showed the gardens and the chickens. Everything was a big hit. When we were all here, we went in for a few minutes, while everyone went to the bathroom. We lit our chalice and headed out. We walkted through the meadow to warm up, and then down past the giant poplar, around which we held hands. The mountain laurel was pretty much past blooming, but we went by it and admired. At the trail, I asked if people wanted to go back or go on past the river and they all wanted to go on. So we walked around half the outisde of Kenney Ridge (the easy, level half), and came out Nancy S.'s driveway. It was about 11:45, so we were walkling for over an hour. We admired a lot of trees and Victoria looked one up in particular. She had been somewhat mystified, but it turns out the Southern Red Oak has many different shapes of leaves, on the same tree! Everyone seemed really pleased and no one was exhausted or hurt. The weather was perfect: cool and overcast, but not raining.

Ray and I had a little lunch and dawdled a bit. Then we headed in to town. He dropped me off at ALT. There are now 20 people registered for the bike ride, which is nice, but I hope we get a lot more. It's time to finalize the numbers of bags and t-shirts (I ordered 50 bags) and line up the volunteers to assemble them. He picked me back up about 4:30 and we came home.

It sprinkled a little, off and on all day, so I didn't work in the garden. Thought about what to make for supper. It was cool enough to want to bake something and warm up the house, but I had used up all my flour on the muffins: white and wheat. There were a couple of zucchini I had bought that needed eating, so we ate them with pasta and cheese--yum! Ray surprised me with an iPad for my birthday! I love it, but it's quite extravagant of him. Partly, it is because he wants to use my laptop while we are traveling. It is lovely, like a giant iPhone. It comes with no instructions, except hook it up to your computer and follow the directions. It is set up now for most things, but not use as a phone yet.

I played with that some and we watched a little TV. Ended up staying up a little late. Molli is home safely in Mexico, tired but fine. I miss her, but still feel her with me, like an echo or shadow.