After a very hot week, we’ve now had two days of rain. Rosie doesn’t like to go out into the backyard when the grass is wet – she seems to not like getting her feet wet, because she’ll shake her feet off as she walks through the grass. 🙂 I’ve been having to lure her outside by going out into the rain myself. Once her feet are sufficiently wet (or once there’s a tennis ball involved) she doesn’t mind the rain, and will sit under her favorite bush until we make her come inside.
We managed to get our Saturday hike in while it was still sunny, though! There’s an irrigation ditch near the start of our regular trail, so Jasper and Rosie jump in the creek at the beginning of our hike to cool off, and then again on the way back to the car. I can fake Jasper out by throwing a rock in the water if I don’t have a pine cone, but Rosie pays closer attention, and she only gets in the creek if I throw a pine cone.
I’ve started to take photos of wildflowers on the trail. I only know the names of a few of them, and I’d like to know what they all are. I even have a book or two about Rocky Mountain wildflowers that would be helpful if I could remember where I put them. 🙂
My library outgrew my bookshelves years ago, and I now have stacks of books piled in front of other books, so it may take a while to find the books about wildflowers. In the meantime, here’s a photo of a lovely clump of yellow flowers that I don’t yet know the name of.
Speaking of books, my short story “Twin Wishes” is now out in the latest issue of the Fiction River anthology series! I sold this story over two years ago at the anthology workshop I attended on the Oregon coast. The theme for this collection is young adult stories involving wishes.
My story is told from the point of view of a teenage girl who is a mermaid – but she can’t allow her friends – or the boy she has a crush on – to learn about this side of her.
But sometimes things turn out differently than you planned, and sometimes wishes do come true. 🙂
John had never even looked at her, so it was ridiculous to be so infatuated. But, just like at least half the girls at school, she couldn’t stop thinking about him.
She daydreamed about walking through the park while he whispered something to her, something special and wonderful, his breath warm on her ear and his arm slung around her shoulder. Her diary was filled with little hearts drawn around variants of “I love John!” or “John + Ileana = True Love FOREVER!” all written with different colors of glitter pens and varying numbers of exclamation points. If only he felt the same way about her.
Of course, even if he did, she couldn’t let him know she was a mermaid.
None of her human friends knew, of course. This was how it had been her whole life. Who knew what would happen if regular humans found out that merfolk were living among them?
– from “Twin Wishes”
in Fiction River: Wishes
