Since we got home...

I loved blogging collectively as a family, but not sure that trend will be possible over the long haul. Maybe here and there. But for now, while Terah is upstairs puzzling, Kali and Alida are doing some "homeschool afternoon" activity together, and Jason is working on the bike shed wall, I'm gonna attempt to provide a window into the 2.5 weeks that have flown by since our landing home. 

From one angle, it could be summed up with just a few descriptors: DRY...HOT...CRUNCHY UNDER FOOT...SUNNY. We went from the land of abundant water with lakes seemingly everywhere, to a parched landscape. 

Here are some other themes!

New things! Kali is taking her first official school class of her life - a writing class at Blue Ridge Community College. So far she has always come home in good spirits. Getting up before 8 twice a week has maybe been the biggest stretch!

Little people! I missed them during our time away. The smaller they are, the more they change in such a short time. Bear is getting so big and waking up to the world around him. And he's such a good snuggler!

Luca is communicating more and more and we are loving his expanding vocabulary. It's so fun!!! He is also a fabulous snuggler, but I admit that I'm enjoying the new phase of being able to lay him down for his naps and regain the feeling in my arms!

The girls' purple bedroom curtain gives the room a pink morning sheen!

We are enjoying keeping Violet a few times this fall also. Terah and Alida are mostly the babysitters in this case and I'm backup. It's their first paid babysitting gig!

Fun outing: We joined Emily, Jonas and Ivy for a fun tubing outing last Sunday. The river was so slow that it was a VERY calm river float (such that the breeze could blow you backwards against the current). The water was incredibly warm compared to Michigan. It was good the run ended when it did because the low water had Emily's tub making contact with a rock in such a way that she didn't have much air in her tube by the end!

Flowers: While I'm feeling inspired to grow even more flowers next year after soaking in the beauty of Janie's flower farm in Flint, we don't have to go very far to soak in a whole array of colors and the bees and wasps and other pollinators are always busy at them.

Even the Mahon Yam are flowering!

Gardens updates: Big changes happen in two weeks' time! The most unpleasant change was learning upon arriving home that a groundhog had taken up residence INSIDE the garden fence. Long story short, the groundhog is now in our compost pile and Jason is our hero. A second one got in and Jason was hoping to repeat his tactic of digging them out of their burrow but we haven't seen evidence of it in the last day or two so we think they climbed out and then we fixed one place in the fence so we hope it will not return!

Here's what we are deep into at this juncture:

Jason is very busy eating as many tomato, mayo and bread sandwiches as he can. And generally eating juicy slices of tomatoes at any meal that makes sense to do so. 

It's salsa, sauce, and diced tomato season. I've had a little help but I've done a lot of it solo this year - but, mind you, I am not ALONE in the kitchen because there are always many podcasters that are happy to keep me company!

The dry weather (with controlled irrigation) has actually "netted" us a lovely cantaloupe year. None of them are splitting! So we are also eating those daily - it's a short but sweet (ha ha) season! It's fun to see Alida and Terah processing cantaloupe seeds (I didn't know how to do that until I was about 40!).

We'll be getting into the larger late summer/fall harvests here soon. Jason just cut, threshed and winnowed the buckwheat this week.

We introduced spraying neem oil regularly on some crops this year and it seems to be making a difference. The snap bean season is going on and on and on! It's slowing but we still are enjoying a lovely mess of delicious beans every couple days. A new taste bud sensation is the fermented garlic paste that was ready when we arrived home. Beans, butter and garlic paste: it's a winner!

I actually harvested several messes of elderberries this year! Thanks to Jonathan and Christen giving me a big tip on how to freeze them and then get the berries off the stem, elderberries are not feeling quite so daunting. I've passed them all to Christen who is gonna juice them with hers this year (YAY!), but I'm feeling glad that elderberries don't feel quite as daunting to me as they did previously!

Our blackberries are more or less over, so here's Terah trying to eat the Michigan blackberries off the screen during our road trip blogging sessions!

Special times: this first one is just cuteness overload!

Thanks to Kali (and Alida) ushering at the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Jason and I got to see Much Ado About Nothing this past weekend! Kali provided us with two free comp tickets as an early birthday present. Amazing acting, horrible story, a number of belly laughs...it was a good time!

And the following evening we celebrated these two beautiful people loving each other for more than 58 years and being married for that many! So grateful to be sharing life side by side with them.

NEWSFLASH: Progress resumes on bike shed wall!!!

It's a very good sign to be able to report that Jason has spent a few chunks of time on the bike shed wall this week. We are not feeling such urgency on the day to day things and so he has been able to shift his focus to trying to complete that task so a cascade of others can fall into line. It's looking good!

And, finally, we saw some really beautiful skies while we were gone! But I'm not sure any rival the sun rising over the Massanutten Mountain!