How Do I Write a Sigh?

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Robert and I are breathing a sigh of relief. This week we had 4.49 inches of rain, and the temperature has not ventured over the 100 degree mark for several days. The rain lilies came out in all their glory.  

And some others are joining in on the joy.


I've planted the last of the sweet potatoes. They're all netted up against the deer. I found another little batch of grasshopper nymphs on one of the leaves this morning. Enough, already. We have enough grasshoppers.

The basil is blooming all over the place. I've been trying to snip the blooms off the basil, but I can't keep up. The bees and bugs are loving the blooms, though. 

 

The eggplants are recovering from the heat. These tiny ones are called Fairy Tale Eggplants. I'm not sure how to prepare them. I bet I can find out on the internet somewhere.

It even looks like we might have a crop of pecans this year.

 In the near future we hope to plant some tomatoes, 

and some leafy greens. Now, if only we can convince the deer to go someplace else for their midnight snack...

 

 

I worked as a manuscript specialist and graduate assistant for seven years at the Armstrong Browning Library in Waco, Texas, the largest collection of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's manuscripts in the world. 

As I was processing letters one day, I came across this drawing on a letter written on 10 June 1843 from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford. It was a tiny drawing sideways in the upper left-hand corner of the letter. It read: "How can I write a sigh? Farewell your own EBB." She had drawn a musical staff with two notes, a very high E and a very low F with a line connecting them. She had drawn a sigh. Can you hear it?


  



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