It feels like the aftermath of a whirlwind having passed through the house; the peace and quiet that ensues after the prolonged visit of two teen-age girls.  I've cleaned the bathroom, changed the linen on the two beds, emptied the waste baskets brim-full of pristine facial tissues, and no longer contemplate what to prepare for lunch.  No preparation of bread dough for lunch pizza, nor macaroni and cheese casserole, nor potato salad or pasta salad, or grilled sandwiches, sigh.

We're done with, for the present, driving two sixteen-year-olds to local shopping plaza, because it truly has been far too hot and muggy to walk any distance other than within the sheltered confines of a canopy-shaded forest.  Although, truth to tell, the day they were driven to the hairdresser they did walk back home rather than call to be picked up.

We're well accustomed to the presence of our granddaughter, and have for many summer past, hosted one or another of her friends for a week's stay.  Worth it, to ensure that our granddaughter really enjoyed her visit, having the company of a friend, although she often enough tells us she is never bored visiting with us and doesn't need a friend accompanying her.  We wait for her to ask permission to invite someone over, and then agree to her request.

This time her friend is a new one to our experience.  She lives on the family farm, a dairy-milking operation, and nearby live her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, with their own farms, one a beef-raising farm, all of them fully operating farms planting wheat, oats, barley, corn for generations past.  Amongst other traditional family farms in Eastern Ontario.

No boys in this family, so the two girls, sixteen and fourteen have their daily chores cut out for them.  The younger one assigned house-keeping tasks, much preferred by her and her older sister does work in the barns, alongside her mother and her father.  On the week-ends she has the midnight milking shift, so she sleeps in week-end mornings.  If she does the milking on her own the process takes two and a half hours; with help from her mother or her father it takes one and a half hours.  She dislikes milking.

She plans, however, to attend agricultural college in Guelph and to obtain a degree in farm administration.  She anticipates her future in taking over her grandparents on her mother's side's farm.