Time of Year

Harvest approaches with its bustling day 
The wheat tans brown and barley bleaches grey

 ~"The Shepherd's Calendar: August" :: John Clare

The days are changing, as much as Summer still has a strong hold on things.  The weather is decidedly more average, maybe even a little below average, though I am wondering if it will swell to the heights it did week before last.  If these are this year's Dog Days, I will take them.  They are divine. 

We've had a real mix of activities lately, experience the best of the current season and gladly trying on a new one.  The mornings are slower to come, though the days are still long.  You can take your pick this time of year--wading in Hurricane Creek or pretending it's Autumn in the dappled shade of Wassona Circle.  

We have had some mornings in the low fifties, which is such a contrast to the steamy starts most days have had.  The house is cool again and the children have had great fun digging up hats and sweaters, even those mittens I made last month!  The days have been warm, though not quite hot, so everyone gets her fill of whatever her heart desires.  Mine desires to feel cold on Whitetop quite soon.

We celebrated Lammas with our harvest sheaf yesterday.  The children really love this, and I wonder how our bread will look in a few years' time.  Willow's mouse has a buttery little nose, as you can see.  We enjoyed pears from the orchard, tomatoes from the garden, and other simple things.  My windowsills are lined with tomatoes and peaches and I think will will gather in the carrots next week after a good rain. 

Just as the seasons are mixing, I'm feeling conscious of this wonderful little place where we live--we can feel very much in town, and very much in country, all at once.  We can wander our blackberry patches and fill our pails, and then look over to Main Street.  I wonder how long it will be like that.  I wonder if the city will grow up around us like The Little House.  There is a funny feeling living in a place like Middle Appalachia--the poverty keeps sprawl in check, much of the time, but there are other struggles to take its place, ones that can be so dark.  Our family is lucky, I know, to somehow have channeled that same spirit that kept The Waltons going through their Depression.

I'll finish with this lovely quote from Singing Family of the Cumberlands:

To stand in the bottom of any of the valleys is to have the feeling of being down in the center of a great round cup.  To stand on top of one of the narrow ridges is like balancing on one of the innermost petals of a gigantic rose, from which you can see all around you the other petals falling away in wide rings to the horizon.  Travelers from the level lands, usually the Blue Grass section of Kentucky to the west of us, always complained that they felt hemmed in by our hills, cut off from the wide skies and the rest of the world.  For us it was hard to believe there was and 'rest of the world,' and if there should be such a thing, why, we trusted the mountains to protect us from it.