June is a grand time for anything fancy.  It is a time to take the china outside and to fill pretty glasses with apricot tea.  It does not matter if it’s a roof top, a back porch or a sprawling rabbit patch-a garden party or a picnic, June is a  time for a special occasion.

I do such things at the rabbit patch and without fail, they become treasured memories. Thank goodness, for clean white sheets-they make any old table look elegant, no matter the condition.  We usually eat in the shade of some old sycamores at an old table with mismatched wooden chairs.  I painted them all white, so they have that in common and it is enough to make a charming picture.  The china does it’s part, as it has always done for generations, to make the meal anything but ordinary. 

 Queen Anne’s lace is blooming all around the rabbit patch, and when paired with the roses from the “Quiet Garden”, it  will make a pretty arrangement and will live up to its’ elegant name.  I have paired them with day lilies and they were  lovely, as well. Whether Sunday dinner is outside under some old trees or in the rabbit patch kitchen, Queen Anne’s Lace will be on the table tomorrow.

 The last days of spring are here. Rain has fallen at the rabbit patch every other day. The yard here is about five acres and it has been difficult to just keep it mowed.  The garden is muddy and if the sun doesn’t shine soon, and for a long while-I may be at the farmer’s market more than usual.   

The school year is almost over and my thoughts turn to such things as picnics and garden parties.  I plan to drink iced tea on the front porch and read books that will take me to far off places.  When I was growing up , mama would take my sister and I to the library when school was out.  There were huge magnolia trees all around it.  We would get our books and sit under the trees and read til mama got back from her errands.  A magnolia is the coolest shade I know of and the flowers have a smell you will not forget. I do not smell a magnolia today, without remembering those mornings.

Thank goodness mama planned picnics too, in the last days of spring. She would pack the basket and we would walk just a short distance to the edge of the woods. It seemed like a holiday every time though to everyone else, it was just a Tuesday.

I look back on the springs of my childhood with a grateful heart.  I think that reading under an old magnolia and having picnics at the edge of the woods are the best kind of occasions a child can have.  It gave me time to notice my world and take in to account things like Queen Anne’s Lace on growing on a ditch bank.