7 My gardens are neglected and jungly. This is partly the result of the usual summer lassitude, but mostly the result of the continued presence of poison ivy in the beds.

I guess we have had poison ivy for years, because I have had terrible rashes every year from working in the garden. This has not kept me from working in the garden before. Back when I figured that I had an idiosyncratic allergy to salvia or something, but was unable to identify the source of the problem, I went ahead and worked in the garden anyway.

Now, knowing that it is poison ivy, I cannot bring myself to work in the garden for fear of getting the selfsame rashes I get every year, and which I could now presumably avoid by paying slightly more attention to what I touch.

7 Maybe it is just summer lassitude.

Anyway, you can see that we have vegetables growing in the jungle. The flowers are not doing as well. I may be brave this afternoon and get to them.

#1 son provided music at a Harry Potter party the other night and was given a copy of the new Harry Potter. He had the first copy of the first book in our area, because I got it for him based on the Advance notice back when it wasn’t famous.

I didn’t even buy the Half-Blood Prince, because we hadn’t enjoyed the one before that very much, but I’ll probably read this one since we have it in the house. We loved the first three. 7

In addition to reading and music and not gardening, we are playing games. Last night #2 son played Wii with me and his dad. I lost abysmally every time. We played a game involving racing cows (my favorite), pool, tennis, golf, a game in which we had to find particular Miis in the crowd, and one in which we had to match shapes in bubbles. In every single case, I lost at about 341 to 2.

My Mii (the character who represents you on the screen) cried each time. I didn’t, of course. I was a gracious loser. But it was a bit depressing to see my character moping and crying while #2 son’s character exulted and got electronic cheers. Every single time.

7 Possibly I was tired from work. Let’s have that be my excuse.

It was quite busy yesterday, and I spent the day unpacking boxes, popping out to the front every few minutes to help with a customer. I am delighted that the store is busy. I was delighted that people from neighboring counties called us to sign up for workshops because they had read about it online. I was delighted to see more online orders coming in.

Still, I was ready when I came home to sit and knit for a while. Here is one skein of Essentials finished. The garter stitch edging is rolling, predictably enough. I usually change garter stitch edging to something else, but this pattern was designed by Elsebeth Lavold, for whom I have enormous respect, so I didn’t. I may crochet around it at the end if it is still misbehaving.

Today I must go to church and the grocery store and possibly work in the garden and clean the house, but I intend to do a good deal of summery lolling as well. I was supposed to go to a barbecue, but The Empress and I have both talked ourselves out of it. Lolling around sounds better.