This fine Thursday, I woke up to essentially the same to-do list as Tuesday, so I went outside and took photos.
As one does.
The to-do list would take a whole, oh, I don’t know, two hours? — not including paying work — if I would just get started. That getting started part has evidently been difficult this week. Luckily, as long as there is snack, the kids don’t notice that other things are lacking. Paying bills, sweeping the floor, cleaning the toilet — that’s just stuff I know needs done, is all. The kids don’t even require supper, really, just another snack.
So, why not take photos. It’s fine. I’ll own my slackiness.
Back-to-school season is quite the whirlwind, isn’t it? Actually, I’m torn over whether school season is more work than that summer in which we (coincidentally? accidentally?) indulged in a do-things-heavy season of softball, fair, and one too many VBSes.
Football. JV football. Junior high volleyball. State fair. Fire board and community fund and the new housing investment club. Seed appreciation supper. Wednesday night church stuff starts shortly and, inexplicably, Husker Harvest Days is already next week. Plus I’m signing up for the Nebraska Press Women fall conference, the front half of which is focused on freelance responsibility/liability, hopefully useful.
Silage harvest is barreling down upon us. And then corn harvest. Despite those activities needing dryer weather, we would like it to rain, so maybe I’ll wash the house windows and all the cars.
I’ll add that to the list.
Pictures, therefore, are a sanity check. A moment in the sun.
Really, I like summer; July is pretty great. September is pretty good also. We can leave the windows open most of the morning, and open them again in the evening. Resting on our dryer are jelly from juice Jeremy’s dad gave me, applesauce made from apples from our pasture landlady, and peaches in brown-sugar syrup — an experiment brought on by a post-Easter sale on brown sugar.
There are more peaches and 24 pounds (a lot of work! but not enough quantity) of sweet corn in the freezer, alongside half of a 4-H pig (named Bacon) and some of the best beef Jeremy’s ever raised.
I may be the world’s worst gardener (true fact), but the tomatoes are finally reddening, and I have enough of that gifted fruit juice to maybe make some hot jelly with all the jalapeños that are soon to take over my entire kitchen.
The blackberry transplants that aren’t yet to the stage of producing are still alive, I’m happy to report, despite the best efforts of drought, deer and rabbits to thwart their survival.
September is good.
In the midst of being busy doing everything but the things that need to be done, I’ve been doing more than just taking photos for escapism. Have you noticed this, too? It’s counterintuitive. The busier we are, the more Speed Limit Zero time I need.
Tara, whose swathing work is going 1000 mph and essentially 24/7, did some research for herself and subsequently recommended two authors to me — Emily Henry and Kate Clayborn. Both are basically brain candy for people who like romance novels; and Clayborn’s “Love Lettering” is beyond creative, very impressive.
I’m midway through two different Ivan Doig books, “Work Song” and “The Bartender’s Tale”. His prose, though — ! So good.
And, I’m also midway through “Killers of the Flower Moon” by David Grann, a recommendation from Monica, and well worth my time in spite of the substitution of “empathically” for “emphatically” in one spot. I get it. Editors aren’t perfect. Ha.
Never before have I ever been midway through multiple books at once, but it’ll do. I’m third in line for the new Craig Johnson book at the library, and I still have a giant tote of books to go through — my favorite Kimball farmer was through here several months ago and dropped them off. There’s no end in sight.
Jeremy and I streamed all but the locked final episode of “Gold Rush: Parker’s Trail” in which Parker and Rick and Karla Ann and Sam the Irish camera guy with shockingly blue eyes go prospecting and (mostly) hiking in Guyana. It was produced in 2018 so it’s not new news, but it was interesting.
All that to say, it’s busy. But it’s good. And it’s not all work and no play, just sometimes it feels like that.
This Prairie Life. 