Let's do June!

So my procrastination can hide no more -- posting a brief look at May at the end of July is proof that I am not the most timely of people. Is it my 9-5 job news job... my part-time photography work... motherhood... wifehood... my veggie garden... life... or one of the 100 other excuses I could list? Who knows... but I do know I might as well get the month of June in now before we reach August.

June started off with our entire family brought together to say goodbye to the woman who is the reason so many of our family members exist - including myself and my daughter. My maternal grandmother passed away in May following a lengthy battle with kidney cancer. On that day, I became the oldest woman in the lineage of my grandmother and grandfather. That position should have gone to my mom, but of course she lost her life to ovarian cancer about three and a half years ago. So here we are. A goodbye to the second-most influential woman in my life - her common sense wisdom and common sense lessons and common sense love will be missed.

But as seems to be the case these days, only marriage and death bring our whole family together. And while we all traveled home to the Florida Keys to mourn, we also made the most of our family time together. Georgia was thrilled (still is) to have had so much time with her cousins. It was a few days of good family times dotted with family goodbyes, regrets, loss and tears. Almost three months after my grandmother's death, I still can't find the words, nor do I yet want to, of the woman I have lost and the lessons and experiences my daughter will never learn because of that loss. I come from a line of A.M.A.Z.I.N.G women, but those women are all now left to memories, life lessons and the bits of them that live on in the women my sisters, my cousin and I are today. Father's Day found Georgia and I continuing what has become an annual gift for her daddy: In June, we also see the end of strawberry-picking, and the beginning of blueberry-picking! This was a first for Georgia and I. We also learned fresh blueberries make delicious blueberry cobbler!

Just a few of the moments I caught during the month of June.