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We celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary Saturday with a sailboat ride on the Hudson, including a festive boxed dinner from Popeye’s. Hoping for more smooth sailing!

Jen has created a beautiful and orderly home for the peonies in her secret garden using only mulch, a few rocks, and several hours of backbreaking labor under punishing heat and humidity.

She used the same formula to create this garden in front of the cottage.

On Friday, we returned from drinks at Chris Rosekrans’s house to find this weird light from the west.

After a few minutes it resolved itself into this more conventional, but still vivid, sunset.

We braved the smoke from Canadian wildfires to attend a barbecue at the Kaimal/Lawson’s Friday night. The Ostroys and the Perkins also attended, and everyone brought their daughters and dogs. It was nice to see the collegiate set assembled, and all the dogs behaved tolerably well.

Daisy knocked over a couple of items (a soda can and a wireless speaker) with her tail, but she remains the best of all possible dogs.

Skies are blue and the grass is high – it must be summertime.

Jen inspected our nano-orchard, which appears poised to produce as many as four apples this season.

Rather than rely on our domestic fruit production, she set out to pick wild black raspberries.

The brambles provided, ensuring we will have jam this summer.

It’s high season for peonies [ed. note: or at least it was before this post spent two weeks in the draft folder]. Here’s a Bowl of Plenty blooming in Jen’s secret garden.

Once again we invited ourselves to the Kaimal/Lawson’s to watch Rhinebeck’s classic — perhaps even trapped-in-amber — Memorial Day Parade.

Lew and Rinda visited for the holiday weekend. Erica and Geoff came up Sunday but were touring houses during the parade. And Sarah was working at the barn.

Each year William Sanchez, the town judge who married us in 2000, gets a year older. Fortunately we do not.

Also defying age is Del Wolcott, 95, seen this weekend driving his tractor.

Here’s a before-and-after look at our back yard from the PondCam. I’m glad no one was using the tree swing!

This is after the after picture. Sigh.

Sarah’s horse for the summer, Sully (formally known as Lanchello), a Dutch gelding, arrived at Southlands Friday morning after an overnight drive from Georgia.

By Saturday, Sully had acclimated enough to be ridden. He seems like a fine fellow.

In unrelated news, Jen’s secret garden has awakened for spring, with blooms including this fancy Blue Columbine.

Jen continues to find opportunities to use the scythe.

Jen enjoyed her customary Mother’s Day breakfast in bed, including an asparagus and wild scallion omelet (also known as the Lawn & Garden omelet).

Of course, having Sarah back home is the best gift of all.

This handsome Baltimore Oriole stopped by to inspect our new copper beech tree this afternoon.

Presumably having found things satisfactory, it flew over to look in on one of our new sugar maples. The trees seem to be growing and healthy.