Summer Break: Week Eight

The Farmboy took this entire week off from work, and we managed a landscaping blitz like we haven't done in years. Y'all should have seen us at the end of each day, moving around like a couple of 80 year olds. Aching muscles and joints from digging holes and pulling weeds and spreading bark. It was pretty hilarious, actually. But at the end of the week, our place looked better than it had since the kids were born. Our motivation was the pending Twistapalooza III at the end of the week, in which we expected to entertain 80-100 adults in our front yard. It's pretty remarkable what a couple of stubborn over-the-hills can accomplish when they've set their minds to it.

This was also the week that we spent trying to cope in 100+ degree temperatures and air thick with wildfire smoke. Quilts on all of the West-facing windows, fans on full-blast at night, eating sandwiches meal after meal, and swollen ankles (my body hates hot weather!). We managed to survive yet again without air conditioning. Someday maybe we'll stop being so frugal and just install the silly thing already.

My herb garden was one of the very first features that we ever installed when this place was just a house in the middle of a cow pasture. For years it has been the bane of my gardening existence, with weeds blowing in from the field, infesting the brick walkways and every quadrant of my lovely compass design. The kids didn't even remember that there were four brick paths. Oy. If I had a dollar for every hour I've spent lifting those bricks and carefully pulling all of the grass and weed roots and re-setting the bricks... well, I'd have enough money to hire someone else to tend it for me. Our approach this time was to weed-whack everything down to ground level, lay down landscaping fabric, spread mulch, then selectively plant a few herbs in each section. The paths will still be a problem, but I'm hoping that we can stay ahead of the weeds moving forward. I'm pretty happy with how it all looks now. I'll have to post an "after" picture in a future post though, because it is currently still home to a couple of blue canopies and two BBQ grills, left in position after our yard party.

Several years ago, maybe even a decade, the Farmboy took some seed pods from a friend's Golden Raintree. He loved that tree and was determined to start one from seed. I completely forgot about his experiment, but under his tender care, the seed turned into a sapling that looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, then suddenly, this year, grew in such leaps and bounds it was astounding. And then, imagine his delight when he realized that it was going to blossom this year. This guy... there's really no end to the things he can do.

Summer Break: Week Two

The sun returned at last, and with the sun, the bees were out foraging and there was playtime at the new RC Car track carved out at the back of the field. Father's Day was mellow and relaxed, with the Farmboy insisting on doing the cooking: BBQ ribs with all the fixins' and fresh homemade Rhubarb Crisp (made by me) with ice cream.

There was Rhubarb Jam making and sunbeams and music making and way too much fill-stitching (watch for this lovely reproduction sampler this Fall). And with the threat of our first heat wave of the Summer, we surprised the kids with our first "real" swimming pool; one big enough to require tractor work to level the ground plus 4000 gallons of really really cold well water. I'm not going in first!

The Rest of September

In an effort to catch up on this blog, I'm going to inundate you with photos and not much text. I hear from you often, that you like peeking into my life, and I don't mind sharing at all. But my life has become so full of good things, that my blog has taken a back burner, and at least for now, the words are going to have to be minimal. At least until I have room in my brain once again, for composing and writing. I want to maintain this ongoing photo journal for myself, so bear with me, please.

Here you'll see the slow change of weather, evidence of humor, live music, group relationships, and the simple pleasures that I try to make note of regularly. Because when I do, sometimes with mental snapshots, and sometimes with real snapshots, it helps me to slow down and savor. Otherwise the whirlwind would sweep me away.