Labor Day

So I am inside laboring on this gorgeous day while Dave is outside clearing brush. I just joined Facebook because I saw that Dave was Friends with a friend of mine and I got jealous. I also have lots of friends there, apparently, and hey, might as well join the 21st century.

Having three mostly unscheduled days off like this is both wonderful and slightly terrifying. Lily and I spent Saturday morning reorganizing her bedroom. It started because school starts Thursday and you couldn't see her desk, what with all the junk on it. And we had to bring out her school clothes, and then I decided I wanted to lose her bookshelf etc etc.

Dave brought up a long, stepped bookshelf from the family room (over the garage) and it fits perfectly in the hallway under the eaves. So all her books are out there now, except for a few over her desk. She now has a bedside table and CD case too. Shelves are satisfyingly empty or at least uncluttered, and I plan to help her keep it that way. Clean sheets, every surface dusted, and a vacuumed floor go a long way too. Maybe I should get her to wash her windows and mirror.

Yesterday we went to Quonquont Farm up in Whately and got picked some apples and peaches, the latter not quite ready but the ones we got arefabulous. I want to go back in a week or two and get a couple of pecks and freeze them, like we did last year: blanch/peel/quarter and put into freezer bags. Yum! The apples we'll just eat, and in two weeks go back for the cheaper ground fruit and make it into applesauce. It was wonderful last year.

Like many farms around here, this place had a terrible summer, with hail several times, a microburst that took down a dozen trees, inches and inches of rain, even a tornado. But it was a gorgeous blue day and we were all outside. We stopped by Nourse Farm to get raspberries but they aren't ready yet. So we went to a farm stand and bought 20 pounds of tomatoes, seconds, which I blanched, peeled, and chopped a little, and froze in about a dozen quart containers to use for making red sauce this winter. I also have a bag of frozen plum tomatoes now and I made what turned out to be a tiny little jar of oven-dried tomatoes. Dave likes to cook with those.

The big thing about our place is the rain rain rain and the lack of sunlight. I really miss the sun, and if I do you know Dave does. It's sunny now and he's in the yard, as I say. Even if we take down 10 or 15 trees we still will never have a sunny spot. But it would be great to have a little more air and space and not feel like the house is being devoured by the woods.

The other big problem is man-eating mosquitos, which was one of the reasons we moved from Brooklyn. Yuck. They are nasty and Dave and Lily particularly welt up.

More news TK, as they say in the publishing world -- To Kome. We visited Bondi in Portland in mid-August for a week and I could see why she's so in love with trees. We went to the Columbia Gorge, visited Dave's cousin who showed us a wonderful time -- note to self, send thank you! -- and then went on to Mt Hood, the Timberline Lodge (!), and Bagby Hot Springs. I'll try to get to that soon.

Also thinking I should keep these posts shorter and more frequent.