Beloved:

      With the bluest skies and perfect air, autumn has officially fallen.  I pulled up my cucumber vines yesterday, harvested the good ones and fed the rest to the chickens, vines and all.  My tomatoes have slowed considerably, the ones worth picking are much smaller.  The deer invaded  my front  beds, eating both fruit and leaves so that they hardly seem like tomato plants now.  The purple zinnias carry on, their stems have turned woody and sometimes tip over with their own weight.  My neighbor traded me 10 pumpkins for two dozen eggs and we both felt like winners. 

     I play at farming, putting up tomatoes, peppers and beans for winter; knowing full well the goal is flavor, not survival.   I quilt and knit for fun, not warmth.  We’ve no physical needs money cannot meet.  And yet, the work feels like something other than a hobby, as though my body and spirit need it to be right in the world.  I come from people who lived and thrived by farming.  None were rich. How poor they were depended on the weather and the price of corn any given year.  My grandmother paid for things with eggs.  Can the need to repeat the tasks, even in the smallest form, pass through generations, like being left-handed? 

      Frost is a few weeks off yet..  Before then I will cut and hang herb bunches on a string in the basement.  It’s for fun of course since I’ll actually use hardly any..  But it pleases me to look at them in winter, and remember them growing by the steps, full of scent and alive with the sound of honey bees. 

       I pray the Autumn is full of life for you and yours, that you have work that gives you pleasure and history that gives you strength.  ~peace & prayers, pastor annette

Beloved:

            Wow, September!  I can hear the hens clucking their morning songs.  The kitchen windows are open and I'm working at home long enough to get my laundry on the line so quilts and sheets will smell like this delightfully cool air.

             Carl was glad to go to work this morning "so I don't have to work so hard," he said.  In fact he was a very good sport as we spent Labor Day weekend sorting, cleaning and organizing our basement and kitchen.  Every shelf, cabinet, bin and drawer got dumped, purged, cleaned and reorganized.

            I tried hard to keep the only that which is useful or beautiful to me rule but as usual there were problems.  To be useful, Tupperware needs lids. I have lids but no containers for several of my big pieces.  Alas, two were in Carl's shop coated in dried plaster of Paris, victim of last spring's AP Chemistry project.  But what about the others and my Tupperware cupcake carrier that is missing altogether?   I did find a $200 check I wrote for the lunch money accounts in November of 2012 - did they eat cupcakes for lunch?

            Parenting is full of little losses, kids take things for the projects and needs of their own lives, leaving holes and gaps in ours.  We either get used to it or go crazy.  We regard the things as disposable community property or hide them.  A friend told me she hides her favorite food treats in the vegetable drawer since her husband and kids never look there for anything. 

            Not just kids of course - life if full of losses small and large.  Our best efforts at staying organized bump up against the needs of others and the demands of time.  Then our spirits choose how to carry the chaos; accept it and move on or go crazy. 

            Yesterday, I was a little crazy but this morning I am missing my two older kids more than I miss my Tupperware so I've decided they are worth the trade.  (Yes Mariah - I know you didn't take the Tupperware!) Because crazy steals the day and this one is too beautiful to miss.  ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette