Sunday - 142nd

It's a quiet day. I keep telling Ed that it's going to rain and storm, but the day is passing without a sign of either. Whatever storms we'll have will be of our own making. And we surely are a stormy lot, us humans, no?

Ed and I were hugely productive today. He's cutting down some dead branches, I'm snipping lilies. We're both pulling weeds. He's mowing. I'm finding more weeds.

The flower fields are moving to that phase where you can't just expect to have beauty thrust upon you everywhere you look. It's not overwhelming. Rather, it's carefully presented. Oh, there still is that sense of abundance, but each day, something from the tableau is removed and the replacements are fewer and less dense.



















Of course, abundance is not necessarily the goal of every stage of gardening. There's something pleasant, for example, about walking down the path I'd put into the Big Bed this past spring. In July, it was overgrown with lily leaves. Now I can cut through the Bed with ease once more.

A few more flower photos for you:
























Breakfast. On the very late side.






We had another project for this day: find some of the cheeper eggs! Only Henny lays in the coop. Pepper lays on a hay bale. The rest? Who knows.

To help us in the search, Ed purchased these cheap trackers. The goal is to tie one around a hen's neck and to use a smart phone to locate her when she disappears sometime in the course of the day. I didn't quite believe it would work. I mean, how do you tie a chip around a chicken?

Ed does not give up. We corner Tomato. He ties the chip. We find the eggs! Seven of them, neatly laid out in a very thick clump of monarda flowers.

(Here's Java with her chip, tied with a string, hidden in the feathers of her neck. Unfortunately, the battery died. Ed is hopeful that with new batteries, we'll track the remaining offenders.)






Evening. We should have leftovers from last night's birthday meal, but I'm feeling the pressure to dig into the CSA box of veggies. We are swimming in corn and broccoli! So, leftovers are leftover for tomorrow and today I make a frittata.

Wishing quiet days would always be this way -- by choice, not by necessity. And of course, I'm thinking very good thoughts about the scientists who will bring us back into the world of inconsequential, impulsive, spirited movement, where doing something as simple as getting together with friends in a coffee shop harms no one at all.

For now, we are happy to do our part by staying put. Tending our garden, tying chips around cheeper necks, cutting through our meadow path in the old orchard, admiring the peaches that are ripening on our peach tree.
















Farmette summer days and nights are memorable even in their quietness. Oh, the sweet pleasure of living in the thick of nature! Even if you do exactly the same thing as the day before, take the same steps, walk the same paths, you wont be stuck in the same sensual orbit. Something will surprise you. Every single time you step outside, something will knock your socks off!