stars and stripes forever.

i love America., hip hip hooray!

and don't try to tell me we don't have freedom, because we do.

we might lose it any day now, but we have it, so i am thankful.

some parts of it I am not proud of;

we are greatly in need of a revival. 

but mostly, I am just thankful. 

we have more freedom than thousands, millions of people dream of.

we are headed down if we don't take a sharp turn now,

but God is still here. and so is freedom.  

so i am thankful. i live in a free country, and i am proud to it call 'home.' 

//

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! 

//

what did yours look like? 

mown hay should really be a perfume.

It really should. 

I would bottle that scent up and put it away for a December day, when I would take it out and smell golden fields while I sighed and watched the bleak grey landscape of winter out my window. 

It's summer. The golden time; the hay bale time; the season of blushing roses, straw hats, raspberry bushes plump with their harvest, and barefoot walks through waist-high wheat. There are flower seeds in our window sill, freckles on my nose, and sundresses dangling in the breeze on the cloths line. 

Meanwhile, thank-you notes are piled in the mailbox, and my graduation cap hangs in the closet to collect dust until I pull it out in the eve of life and remember that dream called youth. For yes, I am at long last graduated--and the days stretch before me like an entrance. Summer opens her arms, and I feel like jumping into them with "wild abandon."

But that sounds too poetic. I think my summer will be just as oxymoron-ic it always is: crazily quiet and hectically slow, tinted with the scent of freshly mown hay.