We weren't able to get to Big Rock on our official engagement night this year (July 9), but we made it out the next week. We've added a delicious BBQ place to our official engagement-versary itinerary, snapped some photos of the 4.5 of us in the clearing and then bid farewell to the mosquitoes and headed over to Dairy Joy. Hot fudge sundae with whipped cream, nuts and a cherry for me, please! See 2013 and 2014.

This is the year that I learn that gardens can be so forgiving. I don't always plan to be such a careless gardener (of either the flowers or food), and there's a lot you can do to make plants grow well and be productive, but a confluence of factors meant there just wasn't going to be a lot of time spent out there this year. Still, sometimes you just put the tomatoes in the exact same holes they were in last year and scatter some seeds with your fingers crossed and tell yourself a weed is not worth pulling until its knee-high and you find that the garden has a lot to give that you feel you don't deserve. Somehow the the tomatoes are growing alright and the lettuce is going crazy (even if it is hemmed in by weeds). The poppies reseeded themselves (in even more splendid colors) and the chamomile and cilantro did as well (in fact the cilantro that reseeded itself over by the tomatoes is growing better than the stuff I put in in the herb garden this year). The ferns I planted and neglected last year came back. The raspberries tolerated my hasty pruning and lassoing in the spring, a plethora of peaches hang from the tree like a promise. They're free gifts that I gladly but a little sheepishly bring inside, robbing the dirt and the brambles of spoils exceeding my toil. Common graces.

Also pictured above:

Baskets full of basil.

Finger painting, my worst nightmare and therefore the best exercise in taking a chill pill.

Growing belly sneaking into so many pictures.

Toad hunting.