Kali is happy to be playing soccer again this fall. I'm happy for her! I'm not as thrilled about the 8 a.m. soccer games on Saturday... This past weekend was her first game. She agreed to do her duck chores after the game (since she seldom gets out there before 9:30 anyway), but it was still a challenging task to get myself and the girls out the door (in decent moods) by 7:30 a.m. Yes, we clearly have not had to get into the mode of getting on a school bus 5 days/week. I sure wonder what the state of our relationships would be if that needed to be our routine most days of the week. As it is, we'll make it through the handful of Saturday soccer games this fall just fine, but I'm sure glad I have 6 days in between games to gear up for the next week! For Kali, it is an early morning. For me, it comes right in the middle of my treasured "morning burst." I feel rather scattered and this past Saturday overwhelmed, when that gets tampered with, particularly when we are away all day Friday and Sunday so I'm packing my three day weekend's worth of home tasks into one day. All that said, it was a beautiful day to be on the sidelines, I am happy to report that I was much quieter than last season, Alida and I had fun doing our own little game on the sidelines whenever Kali was subbed out, Kali got her foot on the ball a good number of times, and she seemed to enjoy herself. Now that she is in the next age bracket up, she is one of the smaller members of her team and the team is much more diverse in level of play. She doesn't seem bothered by it in the least and is diving into the new season with enthusiasm - though her feet still struggle to be ready to move fast at 8 a.m. She'll probably thrive more on Wednesday evening practices than Saturday morning games and that's okay. Even though the canning season is more or less done (Jason has actually done the recent canning - chicken and hot sauce - with very little assistance from me), we are still enjoying a few final tomatoes, some peppers that are ripening much slower as the weather cools, an occasional summer squash, a handful of raspberries here and there, etc... The persimmons are starting to drop and, on my way to and from the compost pile, I enjoy a delightful snack. Alida is obsessed with gathering chestnuts so the containers are stock piling in our fridge waiting for a time when I have several hours to boil and peel them. There are ground cherries waiting to be picked up off the ground that I just haven't gotten the motivation for yet. I do find that it is easier on a day like today to lay down and read an article of a magazine (the Sun arrived yesterday so the Reader's Write section was tantalizing me as it usually does) during Alida's nap which is no doubt a good sign!
We did have an interesting addition to the last three days. On Saturday soon after getting back from soccer we got a call from a neighbor reporting a young black lab down by the road. She wondered if Jason might come see if he could check it out. I headed out to hang laundry only to find the sweet dog in our driveway. I didn't know at the time how sweet he was as he was pretty nervous at first - wagging his tail but keeping a bit of distance, until we broke out the dog treats. He was won over quickly and we put him in our garage until we could figure out what to do next. We waited just a bit too long to borrow some dog food from a neighbor as we found that he had "tasted" our car washing sponge and did some searching through our cardboard for food. Before long we transitioned him to the old goat pen, which is actually a dog kennel. He was as well behaved as could be and mostly was just interested in being with us. Over the next two days we put out all the feelers we could think to put out, assuming there must be a family missing him like crazy. He enjoyed a day outing with my sisters in town, and he got to walk around with Jason and I to put the ducks and chickens to bed for the night. This was a thriller for him, though he really didn't like that there was wire between him and the ducks! If we would ever be tempted to have a dog, this would be the kind we would wish for. But three days was enough to make it clear to us that our lives are just not set up for the kind of time and attention and resources this very sweet, well behaved dog would ask of us. The owners have yet to surface, but we have found a wonderful, loving home for him and so our goat pen/dog kennel is once again empty. What will fill it next??
This morning the girls and I headed out with Emily and Rachelle to do our Adopt-a-Highway run. Emily and Kali are still at it, working on the big trash heap in the woods. The rest of us just did the morning road run, Alida walking most of it by herself for the first time ever. Both girls tired by the end (and were ready for lunch), but they both made substantial contributions to the pick up. Initially I was feeling rather unproductive (not finding much trash or recycling), having to remind myself what a good sign that was! But then as we started back on the other side of our road, we discovered that in fact the person with the littering and coffee and beer habit had in fact not broken his/her habit. Sigh! But despite picking up other people's trash, it was too lovely of a day to feel very grouchy about it. This really is my favorite weather! Here's a few other pictures from the day: 
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