Labour Day

Labour Day is over, really, summer is about over too. It's still hot, and still sunny. The garden is still going. I froze zucchini and canned tomatoes this morning, did laundry, and will vacuum after lunch. I did all these things over the summer, but not all in one day, not with the kids hanging out allover the place. ;o) Yeah, summer's over.

My ticker above remains stuck at 10 pounds. I'm not too wrung out about that, 10 lbs is 10 lbs after all, and I denied myself very little over the past few weeks, so I shouldn't be surprised that I stalled. With September comes new resolve, new determination. By the time it gets to be jeans and sweater weather, I'd love to be comfortable in jeans and sweaters, rather than feeling crammed in like a sausage. But that last stubborn six still must go, so the ticker's staying. In fact, maybe I'll be ambitious and make it eleven pounds, at which point I'll weigh less than I did when I got pregnant with Simon, 14 years ago. That'd be good. Not great, but good. And after that? We'll see.

It's cooler in the evenings now. Even as it gets up to 80º or more in the day, it drops below 50º most nights. I've picked up my knitting again, and have started the little ALQS quilt. Well, I've strated actively thinking about it, anyway.

Even though it's still hot in the daytime, the humidity is far less than the sweltering hell that is July in New England. There is quite often a breeze to temper the sunshine and make those voraciously determined mosquitoes work a little harder for their dinner. They manage. I've gotten back into the habit of spending an hour or two most days on the brush clearing. It was so wet for so many weeks in August that it got shelved, and I lost momentum. Yesterday, though, I stood back to admire just how far I've come. This has been a mostly solo project, and that's okay with me. I enjoy doing it, and I enjoy seeing the progress knowing that it's my work. Of course, I'd probably enjoy the view just as much had there been a gang of ten doing it, or had we rented a bobcat and just pushed it all over the edge of the ravine, but so far anyway, that hasn't been the way this clearing has gone. Whatever. Here's a pic of the view now. I wish I had a real before picture, I probably do somewhere. If you go back to the Weekend posts when I was just starting - here and here - the difference is pretty dramatic. There's a big pine tree in the top right corner of the picture below. It's maybe 20 feet beyond where I've cleared. That's how far I'd like to get before snow, but we'll see. Once we've had a freeze or two the mosquitoes will be gone, and also the yellow jackets that have mostly replaced the deer flies. That'll be nice...