Well, we survived our first week of school without any trauma or drama. We just slid right back into it like there never was a summer. That’s really what it feels like now. Things are starting to look and feel autumnal.
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| Josiah on the first day of his Junior year. |
Hannah is adjusting to her schedule at college. She came home again for the weekend. We took her back after church today. Josiah is back in the swing of things at school. He’s taking several college credit classes this year – chemistry, pre-calculus, and freshman composition. He has his extra jazz band and select choir practices before and after school. This week he will be auditioning for a part in the school musical. He’s going to be busy – and since we have to take him to and from these things, we will be too.
I wasn’t called in to school at all. I usually don’t get called in the first two weeks or so. I spent most of the week painting. I have four barn quilt orders that I’m working on right now. That’s a lot of taping, painting, and waiting. While I’m waiting for coats of paint to dry I read or run outside to do something in the garden.
I’m reading a good book right now, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee by Marja Mills. I love the book To Kill A Mockingbird. I read it almost every year. Harper Lee, the author of that book, is famous for not giving interviews. For almost 50 years she has tried to keep the media away. The author of this book was allowed to interview Harper Lee and even moved into the house next door to her while she wrote the book. It’s a fascinating look at the author of what I consider to be one of the greatest American novel of the 20th Century. I recommend both books.
On Monday while poking around in the cabbage patch I found three nice heads of cauliflower that the woodchuck somehow missed. I saved one for dinner that night and blanched and froze the other two. I also froze a bunch of broccoli florets.
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| Cauliflower! |
I also managed to do some canning, mostly jelly and jam, during the week. I made strawberry jam, raspberry jelly, crab apple jelly, and mixed berry jelly (I didn’t have enough currant or gooseberry juice to make individual batches, so I combined them and it made a delicious bright red jelly). I love jelly and jam on toast for breakfast. Now except for beets, which will be ready in a few weeks, I think we’re done with our canning this year. We aren’t making anymore applesauce and we had no tomatoes for salsa or tomato sauce. On Saturday Josiah carried all the full jars down to the cellar. Things are winding down early this year.
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| Canning waiting to go down cellar. |
On Thursday night we had our annual bat encounter. Every year, usually in August, on just one night a bat comes into the house. Usually it’s upstairs, but this year it was downstairs. I was already in bed reading and Stacey was getting ready for bed when suddenly she yelled “There’s a bat in the house!” and jumped up and shut the bedroom door. She yelled through the door for Josiah to come downstairs and get it out. He tired, but couldn’t so I had to get out of bed to help. We shut the doors to all the other rooms and opened the front door. It flew around and around the living room and dining room, but wouldn’t fly out. For a while it rested on the dining room light, hanging there just like a bat. I tired to coax it onto the handle of a fly swatter, but it took off again. Finally it flew on top of the corner cupboard in the living room and perched on a framed photo. I picked the frame up and carried it out onto the front porch and it flew away. It was a pretty big bat and kind of cute in its way. That should be it with us and bats for another year.
On Saturday Josiah and I ripped out garden #2 where the onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, and green beans were. The onions are harvested, the cucumbers and tomatoes had died an early death, and the green beans were only feeding the Japanese beetles. We tore out all the plants and tilled everything under. I think this is the earliest I have emptied a garden. That’s usually something I do in late September or October.
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| Onions trimmed and ready for one more week of curing. |
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| Garden #2 cleaned out tilled under. |
Every year I look for the big spiders to appear out in the meadow. They build their webs between stalks of goldenrod. This year I couldn’t find any until yesterday. In the early evening I went looking again and I found two. I think they are beautiful in their own way.
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| Big spider in the meadow. |
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| Another big meadow spider. |
Speaking of spiders, that reminds me. (Rachel hates spiders.) We received some exciting news this week. Rachel and Tabor are expecting another child. It’s another girl. She’s due in January. That will be four granddaughters for us. We love it.
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| Sunflowers at sunset. |
Now here we are on the last day of August. Tomorrow is Labor Day. Josiah doesn’t have school, but Hannah does. And Stacey has to work part of the day, so we probably won’t do much to celebrate. I’m trying to persuade the Howes and the Shilligs to have one last cookout, but I don’t know if that will happen. The weather forecast doesn’t look very promising. There is a good chance we might get a thunderstorm. Oh well. It seems fitting to have a non-celebration for the end of a summer that wasn’t much of a summer anyway.
