A LITTLE COOLER AND ANOTHER FINISH

After the storm -- morning fog

It’s cooler now – not quite cool enough for winter pajamas but cool enough to have a blanket at the ready for those early morning hours when your knees get cold.

Last week, I finished chair backs and arm covers in a hexagon quilt pattern from a farm-themed fabric. I’m not a perfectionist, and I don’t do perfect work, but I live with a perfectionist in my head. The hexie project was not difficult but took me months because the perfectionist balked at actually sewing. As long as a project remains in my head, it’s perfect. It’s only when I work on it that it becomes imperfect. Anyway, once I got into it, I enjoyed it, and it didn’t need to be perfect anyway.

And now it’s on to the next thing – a Halloween quilt. “Didn’t you make a Halloween quilt already?” asked Mike. Yes, I did, and I loved that fabric so much that I’m making another. Do I need another Halloween quilt? What does it matter? And even though I will work on it, I might not finish it this year. It’s difficult in that I’m feeling my way along, and as always, I have other things to do.

Wednesday (Sept. 10), I made a batch of hawberry jelly. It only amounted to four jars, but I have enough juice for another batch. The haws are sweet but rather bland. They don’t tickle your taste buds. Lemon juice sparks it up some. We checked again the other day for sincere elderberries but didn’t find any. And we didn’t get any serviceberries this year either. The jelly of the year is haw.

Wednesday night, we had a BIG storm at the farm – big wind from the south coupled with lightning and thunder and finally, heavy rain. The cistern is somewhat replenished now, but we hardly need it. In fact, with more rain in the forecast -- and the fact that we're at the end of the season -- I’m less worried about the raised beds and the fruit trees. Even so, I don’t really know what to expect in this changing world. The given is that the days grow short, and the vegetation gets the message that the season draws to a close.

I picked ten tomatoes yesterday, and a load of cherry tomatoes that I scarcely care about. I had no summer squash, but I have had enough for side dishes and zucchini bread. I even have a few boxes in the freezer -- more than I get some years.

Surprisingly, Bess weathered that storm on the porch, but when Mike put her to bed in the shed, she cried and cried. She does a lot of whining and complaining these days. He finally let her stay in the house. KW

The warm sun dispersed the fog