what we've been doing this summer

It's been a long summer. The sun came out in May instead of waiting til July as it has done the past several years. So it has already been summer for 3 1/2 months and though I feel ridiculous saying so, I'm ready for fall. Can you believe I am saying that? I hardly believe it myself.

We stay very busy.  Every weekend there is some kind of festival going on here or in Portland. We go to fairs and carnivals, food festivals and farms, rivers and parks, libraries and museums.  There are many spray parks here. Whoever invented spray parks is a genius. And we started taking the kids to the swimming pool once a week. They are doing much better with our own informal swimming lessons than the paid group lessons offered at the pool.

We pick wild blackberries and plums. We grow strawberries and cauliflower and tomatoes and kale and carrots.

For much of the summer we didn't cook. It was too hot. But now we are back in the kitchen. Pickles, dried herbs, finding ways to eat and cook and preserve 22 lbs of peaches, watermelon juice and fruit leather, smoked meats for slicing deli-thin (on our own machine). That's just what we've done in the last 3 days.

And we work outside in our "yard", which has become a wild acre of brush. The brush grows faster than we work. I dream of a concrete patio. Blasphemy, again.