The drive to Caitlin's camp is long, but once you're over the bridge into New Jersey it's flat acres of farmland and not much else. The crops are already starting to be harvested. On the ride back to camp on Friday we saw big wagons of pale gold crook-neck gourds that will be sold in the fall. There are fields of yellow squash, black eggplants that look ready to burst, tomatoes, peaches, and miles and miles of corn. Some of the corn has tassels on top already and some is still weeks away from maturing. I can't tell the difference between sweet corn and what we used to call horse corn when I was a kid, but as I recall the horse corn is harvested much later in the fall. We always hoped there would be a few ears left in the fields around Halloween, so that we could remove the hard kernels and throw them in handfuls at neighbors windows on Mischief Night.

The cornflowers and Queen Anne's Lace are in bloom along the sides of the road. Cornflowers are not really a true shade of blue, but rather that wonderful periwinkle color that is so rare. The Queen Anne's Lace float in the fields, levitating above the field grasses, suspended on invisible stalks. Several of the plants we had put in last week are blooming - some tea roses, a purplish variety of phlox and an unknown pink flower, along with the blood red lilies that are still holding a few of their flowers. The moonbeam coreopsis will bloom soon, and the hyrdrangas are heavy-headed with gigantic rosy flowers.

Caitlin bought music and books today to take back to camp. The books included Go Ask Alice, which I remember reading at her age, Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men, and a number of other classics. One of the schools that we're considering for the fall would include these books in their classes and I suspect it's the school Caitlin will be most attracted to out of the entire list.

Books: Finished To The Nines. Light, easy reading. You can tell the author used to churn out Harlequin romances. On to Small Town, in earnest now. I saw Alice Hoffman's yound adult novel Green Angel at the book store and will covet it until a copy of it is mine.

Music: If I Only Had a Heart was on the radio this evening while I was waiting for Rebecca to pick out a movie at the video store.

Cats: Xena is lying draped across my shin, making bread, rubbing her nose against me.