Summer is officially over

when I have to wear socks in the house to keep my feet warm!

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

I suppose I should update the blog’s colors and stuff like I usually do to keep pace with the seasons, but life has been awfully busy lately. And my camera broke right after joining the 100 Species Challenge, so that’s why I haven’t done anything more on it. We bought a cheap one to make do with a couple of weeks ago, so maybe there’s hope yet. :-p

We’re still getting a tomato or two every few days from the garden, but everything else is done. We didn’t plant much this year, not wanting to repeat last year’s major loss on account of the drought.

In the flower beds, the Autumn Joy sedum is turning a beautiful red-burgundy and we have some late roses. We don’t have much fall color here — something I wish I’d remedied before now. I think asters would look really nice. What else blooms this time of year?

The maple trees are just starting to show yellow-orange.

It was drizzly yesterday and we’ve had a light shower today — such a blessing! This spring was wetter than I’ve ever seen it since we’ve been here, but old-timers tell us it was almost a normal spring. Summer was drier than usual, again. I haven’t heard whether last year’s officially declared drought is over or if it’s still in effect — I don’t know how that works.

My nineteen year old daughter has taken on some of the teaching of the younger set which is freeing me up for some extra responsibilities that have come my way in the last couple of months. A grown daughter at home is such a delight, and not just for helping me in my work. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to have another woman to talk to every day!

Life is good.

:-)

Favorite summer salad

Chop one medium tomato into chunks and put into bowl.
Add an equivalent amount of black olives and one or two ounces of crumbled feta cheese.
Sprinkle on a tablespoon or two or minced onions and some basil, then drizzle on a little cold-pressed flaxseed oil and extra virgin olive oil.

Toss and enjoy! Makes one main dish serving.

Clothesline meditations

Using the clothesline is one of my favorite activities in the whole week. I love clothesline season — even when it’s hot, sweaty work… which is really weird. I hate being hot and damp, but somehow it fits, and I enjoy it when it’s part of accomplishing good work.

I love the way the animals mosey up to me when I’m at the clothesline. Paisley swirls herself around my ankles. Chanticleer and his favorite hens suddenly realize that the bugs in that part of the yard are tastier. The goats wander over and nibble on the stuff growing along the fenceline nearest where I’m working. Apparantly they enjoy my company, and I’m glad because I enjoy theirs.

I love August in Virginia. When I’m hanging the first load out after breakfast, the air is cool and fresh and the crickets are still chirping. By the time I take the second load out, the crickets have gone to sleep but the cicadas are buzzing. There’s a family of funny fat green bugs that is very industrious — they’re busy with their saws and ratchets in the treetops. The heat is so heavy that everything seems slow and far away — even the traffic noises sound dull. The only birdsong I hear is the gentle crooning of a mourning dove.

I love the peacefulness of this work. It gives me time to notice things. When I first come out I think that nothing’s happening besides those noisy bugs and the mourning dove singing itself to sleep, but then I notice the butterflies flitting energetically among the cabbage and lettuce blossoms. After awhile I hear an occasional “chit” or “twit” from some unseen bird. A hawk circles lazily high up. Paisley’s kittens tumble and wrestle madly, then stop for a little wash, then dash into the shrubs for a climb…. So many details where I thought nothing was happening!

I love this late-summer feeling. The mad rush of growth in the spring and early summer is over. The apples are so heavy that the branches drag their fingertips in the grass. The summer thunderstorms are over and the fall ones haven’t begun yet. The days are shortening and evenings are full of heat-lightening. The whole world seems to be holding its breath in anticipation of the fall harvest and the rush into winter. It’s like the pause at the top of a swinging child’s arc before reversing and swinging back again.

It seems like this is the season of life I’m in — no longer the mad rush of early marriage with babies coming every year or two and no one old enough to help out around the house. But not yet the mad rush of children marrying and grandbabies aborning.

I love this life.

Thankful Thursday

Praise ye the LORD: for it is good to sing praises unto our God; for it is pleasant; and praise is comely. Psalm 147:1

For all the rain we had this spring
For bringing my children home safely after all the travelling back and forth to visit the grandparents
For the sounds of music and laughter that fill my house with all the children are home

For all these things and more, I thank you, Lord.

On love and mortality

Since our 20th anniversary in February I’m starting to feel like the years are going by too fast. Even if we make it to fifty years it won’t have been long enough.

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12)

Memory is a funny thing

Sunday night, Mosey came to me humming a tune and wanted to know what it was. I told her it was “Rise up, oh men of God,” and she went to look it up in the Trinity (Presbyterian) hymnal so she could play it on the piano.

It wasn’t in that hymnal, which I thought was odd — I know I’ve played it a lot in the last few years, and that’s the hymnal I use most often — but I told her to check the Baptist hymnal, the one I grew up with. Sure enough it was there. St. Thomas is the tune’s name, so I looked it up in the Trinity. “I love thy kingdom, Lord” is one of the two hymns sung to St. Thomas in the Trinity. It’s also the hymn we had sung before the Gospel reading that very morning.

As if that weren’t bad enough, not only am I the one who picked out that hymn, but I’m the one who played it during the service! And yet, the words that came to me when I heard the tune by itself were the ones I grew up with.

That's muh boy

Yesterday while we were turning the calendar page over, I mentioned to my little man that his 8th birthday is next month. And that’s when it struck me… he won’t be home for it. My mom and I spent at least an hour on the phone together Saturday going over our upcoming commitments (and they are legion) and planning how to get all the kids out to her house, half-way across the country, for their regular summer visit. We’ll be doing it in two batches, the boys one time and the girls next.

So I told him, “You’ll be at Grandma’s on your birthday this year.”

It fell out this way two years ago too, and I would have thought he’d prefer it that way. But he said, “I’d rather be with you on my birthday… When I’m with you I get tools, but when I’m at Grandma’s I only get toys.”

:-D

Silver

[This is one I'd hoped to use back in April, but couldn't work it in.]

Silver, by Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon:
This way, and that, she peers and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Comparisons are odious

My oldest children participate in a community chorus that focuses on the great music of the Church, historical and contemporary, putting on a concert twice each year. Every spring the director has the graduating seniors sing a special song together, and she includes a brief bio on each in the program.

Well, the spring concert was last night and Elaienar was included in the “graduating senior” group even though if I had to get technical about it I’d say she finished 12th grade last year. I didn’t think about mentioning it to the director back then since Elai was busy with other things that spring and high school graduation would be, for us, a rather artificial way of marking our children’s milestones. But we had no objection to her being part of the graduating group, since this is the last year she’ll be singing with the group as a student. If she continues to sing with them, it will be as a mentor.

Unfortunately, we’d forgotten about the bio, so when Elai was asked to write one up at the last moment, she wrote one that was short on facts but long on wit. I thought it portrayed her personality in a way that a list of facts wouldn’t do.

But the dear director, bless her heart and we do love her to pieces, doesn’t share Elai’s quirky sense of humor, so the bio that was written up in the program was nothing like what she had written. It was sweet and affectionate, but it looked so dull next to everyone else’s lists of accomplishments and awards and honors and scholarships and where they’re all going to college. If I’d known it was going to be rewritten I’d’ve had her supply more facts to pad it.

You may not believe this, but I actually woke up this morning with a sick tummy because it was bothering me so.

When I’m at home doing what we’ve set out to do, I’m reasonably happy with what we’re doing and I like the way things are working out. It’s just when these occasions where it’s impossible not to make a comparison occur that I doubt and second-guess the Lord’s leading. And I don’t like being different – it’s so uncomfortable. Really, I just want to fit in… I want everyone else to like me and approve of me. Elai says I have an inferiority complex – she’s not worried about the bio at all because she honestly doesn’t care what other people think about her and her abilities.

Blech.

See, I should make this into a post that encourages other people to trust the Lord.

Something spiritual.

Like my favorite bloggers would do.
:-p

Spring

~ John Gould Fletcher (1886–1950)

At the first hour, it was as if one said, “Arise.”
At the second hour, it was as if one said, “Go forth.”
And the winter constellations that are like patient ox-eyes
Sank below the white horizon at the north.

At the third hour, it was as if one said, “I thirst”;
At the fourth hour, all the earth was still:
Then the clouds suddenly swung over, stooped, and burst;
And the rain flooded valley, plain and hill.

At the fifth hour, darkness took the throne;
At the sixth hour, the earth shook and the wind cried;
At the seventh hour, the hidden seed was sown;
At the eighth hour, it gave up the ghost and died.

At the ninth hour, they sealed up the tomb;
And the earth was then silent for the space of three hours.
But at the twelfth hour, a single lily from the gloom
Shot forth, and was followed by a whole host of flowers.