Foggy and crisp, and crickets...

I used to love this time of year: crisp mornings, thick morning fog lifting later, to show forth a warm and sunny day. Crickets sing the end of the season, and apples hang heavy on the branches... 

Okay, I'm channeling Keats a little. Reality creeps in a bit: it's almost time to engage in the activities of getting ready for autumn, and the list of chores and must/should-do things grows each day. Clean the wood shed for the pellets, tie up the grape vines (if we can), watch for apples and pears to be ready to pick, schedule a furnace cleaning, clean the pellet stove, and on and on. The things I wanted to get done this summer have been set aside for the most part, and we've been only able to manage each day as best we can. It will have to be enough. 

If today warms up enough, I'd like to get into the pool with Holly, but the water will have to warm up quite a bit. I cleaned it yesterday and retrieved the sinking pool cover (too much rain). The water was really chilly, and I don't relish that. Perhaps it'll warm enough. That's one thing I don't have any control over. While I was working on that little project, the resident garden snake swooshed through the grass alongside the pool-- I am not scared of it, but it was a minor "gah!" moment. It has gotten quite large on crickets and other bugs this summer. I don't know if it lives under the edge of the pool, or if it just likes to hang out there, but snake-sightings have been a constant this summer. 

I picked another huge bowl of tomatoes again yesterday (thank goodness we like'em), and I'm still waiting for any signs of squash. So weird; the plants are lush, but no fruit. I found the old pool cover and used it to provide one more layer of protection over the three tons of pellets that got delivered on Monday. That project is going to have to be a priority soon enough. 

My goal for today is quiet. I hope for a few hours of it, but we'll see how that goes. G has a check-up on his foot today; yesterday, with Meg's intelligent reading of his lab reports, he got yet another antibiotic to combat the low-level but clearly present post-op infection. I hope he gets good news on the overall healing process. This entire situation is really wearing on him, and on us all. It is really hard to see a person so used to being busy and physically able shut down this much. And it's not just because there are things to do, things that didn't and couldn't be done-- it's his caged lion kind of angst. Tomorrow is our anniversary, and it will likely be "just a day," which is not that out of the ordinary for us; usually, he's at work, and we barely manage a nice dinner. This year, I'm not sure we are going to be able to do anything at all. If he gets good news today, that will be a gift in itself.

Keep him --and us-- in your thoughts, please. I fantasize about taking a long weekend in the fall to recapture some of the summer that feels a little lost. 

C