I now feel qualified to answer the deeply significant question: If I could have only one or the other, which appliance I would keep, my stove or my refrigerator? No hesitation here. I would give up my refrigerator first. Cooking for a baker’s dozen last summer without a stove was way more challenging than working around no refrigerator.

This is not to say that I won’t be thrilled when Sears appears with the new refrigerator. Having to fruitlessly rifle through “Porn Star” then walk to Ben’s house for mayonnaise has probably been good for the health, but it gets old fast.

On the garden front, storms and cold rainy days have left the perennials leggy and drooping. I carry twine, stakes and scissors with me on my travels, trying to try up all the Roses and also retrieve the Peonies from their determined flumps onto the ground. The only saving grace of the nose dives is that they give me an excuse for cutting big bouquets of flumping Flowers for the house.

One plant in particular looks done in my the weather and doesn’t look any better when plucked for a vase. I speak here of the Irises. I am a bit of a nut about Bearded Iris, but I wonder if this is a Flower I should stop pursuing. They are easily damaged by storms and once again this June they have been knocked around in spite of careful staking.

If it’s not wind and rain that get them, it’s the dogs. Perhaps because of where I have placed the Iris along the edges of garden paths, the dogs frequently break off their Flower stalks. It is always a dramatic moment when I realize there will be virtually no Flowers on the Iris because MayMay wanted to beat Riley from the front yard to the back.

One patch did look glorious this year and was spared by MayMay, Riley, and Reina, earning an awful lot of Iris in the gardens a reprieve.