harvesting...

Bundles of just-picked herbs lay waiting to be rinsed and turned into an herb weaving, while spatterware buckets filled with potatoes, onions, peppers, and tomatoes are sitting at the
garden's edge. Potatoes and onions will be carried to the basement and stored in wooden bushel baskets. Not really a basement...
the low ceilings, wooden shelves, partial dirt floor, and tree trunks (yes, tree trunks!) that help hold up this 146-year old house, make it more of a root cellar.

Our neighbor tells me she has just finished canning over 100 quarts of tomatoes, and is ready to put the garden to bed. We'll be doing the same this week...canning the remaining peppers and making tomato sauce, then tilling the garden and letting it have a long winter's rest. Gather, prepare, put by...it's a quieter time of year, yet we're busy as bees.

There is a sense that summer is winding down. Yesterday we woke up to a morning that was 38 degrees...sweater weather as they call it, and my favorite time of year! Last night while Little Man was on the tire swing, I noticed subtle changes around us. The evening was still...soybeans are now golden, field corn is dry, and the sunlight cast lengthening shadows around us.

It's the time of year when we find ourselves trying to savor it all...the simple pleasures of changing seasons and sweet September.