Happy Meteorological Fall

I make no secret of the fact that I don’t enjoy summer. I wilt in the heat—even a dry heat—and I dislike the fact that so much activity gets crammed into a three-month period. The arrival of fall is a welcome relief. Looking at the long-range forecast, I am wondering if it’s going to be a rainy one. That happened a few years ago; it rained most of the month of September. Susan tells me that’s not ideal for apple trees as they start to go dormant in September and too much rain confuses them.

Thanks to the recent rain, all the fire restrictions have been lifted.

Our kids arrived yesterday for a long weekend visit. DD#1 and DSIL flew down to Seattle from Alaska on Thursday. DD#2 and her boyfriend picked them up at the airport and the four of them drove to Spokane. They stayed there Thursday night and got to Kalispell just after noon yesterday. The husband is taking the four of them hiking today in Jewel Basin, which is a beautiful wilderness area in the mountains just across from our house. To be honest, it’s too hard to get into Glacier National Park these days, and the views are almost as spectacular up in Jewel Basin.

This is a pic of the husband and me on Mount Aeneas in 2014.

This will be my view today (those kinds of hikes are a bit much for me now):

I am going to clean off the Red Wealthy and Honeycrisp trees today while that group is hiking. I don’t want a bear to do the job for me. I’ll also do as much garden cleanup as I can.

[The husband told me not to fall off the orchard ladder. I said that I would be in the front yard, so if I ended up lying on the ground under the trees, someone driving by would see me and stop.]

I am pretty much ignoring any other demands on my time until after the kids leave because I want to enjoy every minute of having them here.

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I stopped in at the quilt store south of town yesterday morning. A couple of women who have been in my serger classes were there sewing. The store makes the classroom area available for open sewing when it’s not being used for classes, and for some people, that’s a good place to work on larger projects. These two women have embraced the joys of the Walmart remnant rack. We joked that maybe we need to start a support group—”You can be the chairman, Janet”—because we will text each other if one of us sees that the remnant rack has been restocked. One of the women even had a couple of pieces of fabric with her, so we talked about possible projects. I’m so happy to see my students making their own clothes.

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Some things are going to be changing with my schedule. (The Word of the Year for 2023 is still NO.) Now that I have some clarity about when and where I will be teaching classes, sewing is going to be my priority, especially going into 2024. The secret project is wrapped up in this, too. I still plan to be involved in a few volunteer activities, but those are no longer going to be the tail wagging the dog when it comes to my schedule.

I’m feeling more than a bit annoyed with how self-centered and selfish most of society seems these days. I’ve stopped counting how many people run red lights and stop signs in town. Aggressive driving seems to be the norm. “Me first” is rampant here, when it never used to be like that. People want “community” as long as someone else is doing most of the work. We’re in the process of a surveying the community about the future of our local homestead foundation. Respondents have a lot of ideas of what they want, but when asked if they would be willing to volunteer and help out to make those ideas happen, more than a few say they are “just too busy.” Aren’t we all.

I know, this is a sermon I preach frequently. And maybe we have to get to a certain point where things fall apart before we can start putting them back together. I really need to make getting to sewing on Thursdays a priority. That group of women pitches in and gets things done. One of the most enjoyable parts of those Thursday get-togethers is Show and Tell—the amount of appreciation and support for each other’s work is as wonderful as it is unusual. I need more of that in my life.