Oh hello there! I’m so glad to share a cuppa with you! How the heck are you?
Can I offer you some hot, black tea? The kettle is hot if you’d prefer coffee, too, or maybe herbal or iced tea is more your style?
We have it all so no need to be shy, just let me know and we’ll settle in down by the orchard and watch the goats graze on the field. We’re all enjoying the cooler temps that have blown our way over the past few days.
Living
My youngest finished up Summer Camp at the end of July leaving us with a liminal space of about four weeks before our homeschool learning begins. These weeks have been a lovely mix of down time, travel and visits, farm management, and curriculum planning.
Highlights include a trip my wife and daughter took to the St. Louis area to visit family and my best friend visiting me for a long weekend. While my family bounced between seeing all the brothers and cousins and grandparents, my BFF and I visited the Farmer’s Market, had a lovely lunch in the park with my immediate family, spent some time at my favorite bookstore in Santa Fe, and visited Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return (a wild feast for the senses), broken up by chill days at home where we watched ridiculous movies, laughed our asses off, listened to lots of music, and reflected on our 33 years of friendship.
It was magic.
To top it all off, we’ve also added two (yes, two) new kittens to our home which is soaking up every excess second we have at our disposal!
Reading & Writing
Reading & writing absolutely took a back seat this month as I focused on friends, family, and the farm but I did get a few planning tasks done for this site and managed to publish two posts this week as I get back in the swing of things:
Re-inspired by some communications with distant cousins and the cooler weather/Spooky Season ahead of us, I’m excited to get my writing groove back!
Miraculously, I also managed to make my way through a couple of short, easy reads, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed:
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The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
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Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, Reese Witherspoon’s book club pick for August
I’ve just started Long Live the Pumpkin Queen by Shea Ernshaw which is proving fun so far and should immediately tell you which generation I belong to 😉 Any guesses?
What have you been reading/writing/planning/inspired by recently?
Farming
As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s been a doozy of a season on the farm. Between the hail, consistently (& stifling) above average temps, and the pest pressure, it’s all easily added up to our worst growing year in about 15 years.
I don’t have any hard or fast answers right now, because I’m tired and worried about the future, but I’m not a fatalist so I’ll keep plugging away, doing what I can to tend the land in present time and working on a larger scale to maybe help ensure a healthy future for our kids and grandkids.
The blackberries and raspberries are finally ripening up and we’ve harvested a handful of the most glorious strawberries so there’s hope in that in addition to the blue corn thriving and sizing up and carrots coming out of the ground in bunches.
There’s something to be said for heirloom/landrace seeds and a lot of humility as we face more climate uncertainty. Maybe I’ll get around to writing about it on the farm site soon.
On that note…
I should take my leave and go harvest some berries 🙂
Thanks for popping by for a cuppa! I always enjoy hearing what you’re up to and how life is treating you!
Big thanks to Natalie the Explorer for providing us the platform to get together each weekend! I’ll be popping around throughout the weekend, visiting as many spaces as possible and thank you for doing the same! Comments here on Square Space are a little wonky and don’t allow for direct links to your site when you leave a comment. Please feel free to leave your website link directly in your comment so I (and others) can head straight to you and see what you’ve been up to!
I hope that whatever you’re up to this weekend (and beyond) it’s thoroughly enjoyable!
Onward,
Melis
A visit from a best friend AND TWO new kittens! Life doesn’t get much better than that! I do love kittens, but I can imagine how they’d eat up any spare time you have on your hands. We need some more kitten pics next week 🙂
Life is, indeed, very full and so very good. I will be sure to share more kitten photos in the weeks ahead! They’re still so fluffy and sweet!
I just had to place an order on Amazon this weekend when my youngest reminded me he wanted to attempt to learn the piano this year in our homeschooling and I had no supplies for that! I feel like each time I think our curriculum is set he reminds me of something else we wanted to try. We’ve been enjoying our last few weeks of vacation and spending lots of time with family too since we had some extended family visiting from other states. It was so nice to see everyone! It sounds like you have had a good month too.
I’m so glad you had a lovely month! 🙂
Oh yes, that happens here, too. We start each semester with a brainstorming session to cover her wants and interests but things always come up that have sparked in her. Yay for piano interests! We’re currently very interested in digital art so are trying to find just-the-right app that has all the tools she wants without all the ads.
I hope you’re slide into the week ahead is a smooth one!
So glad you got to spend time with your friend! I’m sorry you’re having a not-great farm year. Gardening has taught me to have tremendous respect for farmers. If I had to survive on what I grow, I’d starve. There are so many variables that affect crop yields.
Have fun with the new kittens!
Hi Janet! Thank you for your kind words. Yes, farming is nothing if not humbling. Though we try our best to grow as much of our own food as possible, I’m ever grateful to have the modern convenience of the grocery store and other local farmers in different microclimates whose varied crops do better than our own in any given year.
The kitties definitely keep us grounded joyfully in present time 🙂
Thanks for dropping by! Hope you enjoy a wonderful week ahead!
Thank you for your weekend coffee share. So glad your family had a good trip to St. Louis and you got to spend time with your best friend. I hope you harvested lots of yummy berries and you’re having fun with the kittens. Have a wonderful week!
The lost apothecary is on my to be read list.