Sunday

How can a morning just disappear?

Easy: clean the farmhouse. Two hours for that, even with Ed helping.

Then: computer work. Including republishing yesterday's post which, if you read it right after publication you may have wondered. Truth is, I published it in midsentence and fell asleep at the same time. And so it was not entirely flawless. A correction needed to be made.

After? I don't know. I just do not know how it became noon before we sat down to breakfast.





And only then do I sit open up my work books and that's just not good! This semester, I need to work all day every day!

The skies are cloudy, but not with rain. We need rain.

I work quickly, efficiently. To make up for lost hours. This is my fall semester. This is the way it will be from now until early December.

On the upside, at the end of it all, maybe I'll go far away and the world will seem sane again.


Late in the afternoon, I pause. Anything that'll bring  physical movement to the day would be so very welcome.

We go right back to the raspberry patch and resume digging. There's no good photo to be had from the digging and pulling and clearing. Unless you look up from your labors and glance toward the sheep shed and notice the flowers there. In the most unexpected places at the farmette, there will be flowers.






Other unusual elements to the day: finding that the walnut tree is finally producing.





Insignificant quantities thus far, but still -- tasting a walnut straight off the tree is ... sublime.

And too, hopping on the motorbike to participate in our informal food exchange -- that's cool as well. Perhaps more importantly, this particular hobby farmer is likely to help Farmer Lee relocate her own fields of veggies and flowers later in the fall to soon to be cleared lands on his rather large farmette (thanks to a huge effort on Ed's part to find her substitute growing spaces, now that she's been kicked off the fields across the road from us).

We bring cucumbers to the exchange and take away tomatoes. As if we need more tomatoes!






Dinner,   My older girl is at the farmhouse for the evening meal. People and animals are really pleased to see her here.






The meal, as always, is simple and now, too, full of things from our own gardens. Corn, tomatoes of course, cucumbers -- the usual palate. (The trout is 'imported' from up north.)






And that's it. Any variation to a schedule such as today's in future weeks will  surely be accidental...                                                                                                                                                                                                              

polkadot sky

We wake up to a warm day. A very warm day. Actually, it's going to be hot.

Breakfast? I ask. I'm always excited about breakfast.
No, not yet. Work first.

He's right. We want to put in at least an hour clearing the raspberry patch. Not just weeds -- weed trees have taken over any bare spaces. It really is one huge mess. If we do a little at a time, we won't be overwhelmed. This morning, we want to put in a little of that time.

Never try to pull roots out of a soil that hasn't seen rain for a long time. An hour later and we're beat.
Here's our cleared space -- not much, right?  A little at a time.





Finally, breakfast.






And, for me, work. On the warm porch, watching the world turn from a bright green of mid summer to a duller green. A green portending autumn.

Lunch, too, is on the porch. Ed's apple jam over peanut butter.





So... why polkadot sky in the title line? What prompted that?

I can't help you there. Maybe something in the next set of images They're random -- as they tend to be on these work filled days. Here's one from mid-afternoon --  Ed, picking up Isis, who is pestering as always to be elsewhere...






And then, one from the evening motorbike ride to play a game of tennis. On the return, we pass the slowly disappearing Farmer Lee's fields of flowers...







And finally,  later still, I head out to celebrate a friend's (50th) birthday.






Maybe the title  comes from that last image -- soy fields under a colorful setting sun... A sky that fills with stars on the trip back.