My Bountiful Life…

We are just home from a glorious week away Up North at a cottage on a lovely lake. It was really a wonderful time.

As I plow through the mountains of sand-filled laundry and other stuff to put away, it feels like this marks the end of Summer. Here in Canada, the traditional end to Summer is Labour Day, as school starts right after and the days are noticeably shorter. That is only two weeks away and I have the sense of winding down and starting to bring things back to order. I have a lot of email to catch up on, maintenance on the Homeschooling Blogs Webring, gardening, canning, and it is time to get back to more regular writing for this blog and for Suburban Green Is People. This promises to be a really busy and interesting ’school year’ chez Bountiful. I have more to say about that, and about knitting and about our vacation, but the laundry really must come first. This life of glamour that I lead is, sadly, also a life of toil *dramatic sigh*

BUT! I am sneaking away from the laundry room for a few minutes so I can show you this. This is Boudicea, she is a 10 week old standard poodle and we brought her home on Saturday. We love her more than anything :)

Early this afternoon, just as I was putting The Baby down to sleep, it began to rain. The thunder rolled continuously in the distance and as I came back downstairs, it began to rain harder. I stood for a minute, looking out the kitchen window at my gardens. I had planned to work in the gardens while he slept. I am definitely not made of sugar and I have been known to garden in the rain - even the pouring rain - but generally, it is considered a reasonable choice to not garden in the pouring rain. And that is the choice I made. So what should I do with my time?

I’ve got some new (to me) dining room furniture and so I could easily fill up nap time by cleaning glass and moving dishes and crystal. I’m behind on the laundry (as usual), so spending a couple hours catching up there would be time well spent. There are always dishes. Or dusting. Or the pile of crap in front of the freezer in the basement that I need to deal with. I could even get a head start on dinner.

But no. I did none of that. Instead, I made cup of peppermint tea and buttered - with the whey butter I recently discovered at the local Farmers’ Market and highly recommend - a thick slice of cinnamon roll bread, took some simple knitting and sat out on the porch.

I was well out of the rain, but sat in the cool and damp swirling air, had a clear view of the lightening, and could hear the rain falling and dripping in the garden and running in the downspout.

Max, the cat who came back, kept me company from the window.

I rocked and knitted and sipped my tea for most of an hour. It was lovely. I could have been more productive, sure, but I don’t think the time could have been better spent.

I can’t believe that July is almost over. How can we have been so busy and there still be so much more we wanted to do? We’ve done some of this:

And this:

And lots of this:

So… eight days left in this month and then all of August. We’ll be sure to make the best use - not necessarily just the most productive use - of our time, our Summertime. Right now, since the rain has stopped and the sun is shining again, I’m going to slip on my shoes and go out to do my daily inspection of the vegetable gardens and to top up the bird feeders. I know that sounds productive, but it is all play, trust me ;)

Last week, Artemis died.
We discovered she had a brain tumour and were told she would gradually decline over the next months. But her decline was sudden and fast and she was gone almost right away. It’s been 10 days and we are still reeling. I miss her so much.

I’m grateful that her suffering wasn’t long, and that other than this, she was healthy and happy. And I’m grateful for having known her. She was an amazing dog. She was really smart, confident, protective, affectionate, and completely lacking aggression. I liked her better than most people.

I still go to check her water dish several times a day, go to let her out one last time before bed. Yesterday, the doorbell rang and there was no barking. Jordan and I stood there, looking at each other and finally he said, “That was weird”. And it was.
But I’m finding that what I miss most about her is her sense of humour, she definitely had one. She was funny.

I loved that dog.

A regular reader emailed me to ask me if I had taken down my last post (from yesterday - spice tins at the top). I hadn’t. I could see it in Firefox, but not in Internet Explorer or on a Mac. When I looked at the html for the post - it had been altered and was full of spam. Nice.

I’ve fixed the post and you can see it now, but still don’t know how it happened. :/ so uhh.. yeah. Changed my passwords and now I’m going to run some spyware trap stuff and hopefully it’ll be fixed.

I love the spammers. Seriously. Only, not really.

That final sprint for the finish each “school year” (and I use the term loosely) is an adrenalin soaked affair of jam-packed schedules, early mornings, packed lunches and the mantra, “Almost done, almost done, almost done..”. I don’t even think that there is a lot more that we were doing in April and May. Okay, there is a lot more, but it isn’t so much as to send the rest of your life topsy-turvy. At least, it sure doesn’t look like it in February and March when you are planning it all. In planning stages it looks like Fun! and Excellent Opportunities!… and it is, it so is, but when you get the the point that you can’t remember the last time you ate lunch at home and the baby napped in his bed and it’s getting harder and harder to get up in the morning… that’s the point you wonder what the heck you were thinking.

Now that it’s (mostly) done, was it worth it? Absolutely. Are we burnt out? Sure. But we’ll recover and then want to do it all again. There was an intense animation course that was a lot of work and time, but Jordan absolutely loved it. He learnt so much and has acquired a new, very cool, hobby. There were the weeks of drama classes that he couldn’t wait to get to. Guitar lessons. The Nature Programme, horseback riding, plus learning to type and reading hundreds of pages every week. There is always hockey and the paper route, of course, and learning to feed the baby, and watching old movies. These few months have been a productive and exciting time for Jordan. He has grown so much.

He’ll be 12 on Sunday. But I’m not thinking about that.

Now that we’re “done” (and I use that term loosely, too), I’ve been spending some time taking care of little details - not necessarily the most urgent details, but the ones that give me the most pleasure. Like, for example, filling my spice tins. I got those spice tins in two sizes at Lee Valley and I love them. They are big, so they’re perfect for things like oregano (because really? I can’t think of any time I’d use 1 teaspoon of oregano. I use at least a quarter of a cup or none at all, yanno?) and cinnamon (mmmm.. cinnamon). Spices I use in smaller amounts go in the smaller tins. The lids have glass windows in them and when I open my spice drawer I’m looking down through all those little round windows at all the colours of my spices and herbs. And that is exciting to me every single time. (yes, yes, I know ;) ). I label the sides of the tins, but I like to try to choose my spice or herb by it’s colour and texture through the window. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. (Maybe I need a hobby?) In the photo above: paprika, poppy seeds and sesame seeds.

I’ve also put my vegetable gardens in. There aren’t words for how much I love this. I’ve had problems in the past with blossom rot on my tomatoes. I’ve read that this can be due to a lack of calcium in the soil, so I’ve been washing and saving our egg shells. I grind them up with my mortar and pestle, and I sprinkled them around the roots when I put the tomatoes into the ground. I’ve ground up more now to add later.

There are more things Jordan wants to learn and to learn to do, so we’ve made an outline for the summer months. This plan calls for much more time at home, and much less driving around, leaving time for playing in the sandbox, long naps in bed, and puttering in the garden. Well, that’s the theory, anyway ;) But Jordan has already acquired that hammock he wanted and has broken it in with a couple of good books :)