Okay, it's the time of year where all Northwesterners will envy me for living in Texas. Tanner finally fenced in our backyard and installed a clothes line, so we are really taking advantage of the soft breezes, comforting sun and bright blue sky this year.

Sky so blue that you squint when you look up at it. No haze. No thin layer of milky gray to mar the sight. So clear that the sun makes your skin look golden even before it begins to tan. The type of weather that begs you for a walk and then after you've done that, you feel like going for a stroll to get ice cream or you feel like packing cold chicken and biscuits and corn and finding a bubbling brook to sit at while you have a picnic spread across a red and white checked table cloth. Kids belong in white on days like this with little straw hats. Little girls make wreaths of daisy chains and little boys have muddy knees. Bunches of wildflower bouquets fill mason jars that are stacked across the kitchen window. The jars are meant for jelly, but the girls have commandeered them.

That's the kind of weather we are having.