Hello, September!

I know, this isn't technically the beginning of September. Yesterday I spent much of the day moving sprinklers around trying to save our still-relatively-newly-sodded backyard and trying to fight the unavoidable wilt of everything in the vegetable garden. Our windowboxes looked like a long forgotten gaudy prom corsage. Thesis of this post: It's been HOT and DRY around here. Last night, Mr. K got out his telescope (mad nerd cred, yo) and we all stood in the sheep paddock and looked at Jupiter and three of it's four moons (the last one was hiding, maybe?). In the hour or so we spent outside, the temperature started to drop. My the time the telescope was back inside and the various blankets, balls, and drinking vessels were picked up and put away, the wind started to pick up.

It howled pretty much all night (poor K and his allergies) and now I'm looking forward to a much (as in 20F) cooler day today and some possible rain tonight. This is our first little taste of autumn and I couldn't be more ready. It hasn't been a banner garden/yard/patio summer - much was planned, some was accomplished, little is finished. The cooler temperatures ahead will allow me to shift out of triage mode and into project finishing mode. I'd at least like to get the newly-created vegetable garden mulched, tidied, and amended before the snow flies (and I'd better get going because the first signs of the "white stuff" came on October 8th last year).

I probably should be taking advantage of having the kids home for the long weekend to get some of my yard chores done but C has tons (as in hours) of math homework (her Algebra I teacher isn't messing around) and R and A have devised a quirkily adorable game where R is a cyborg and A is a ninja and it involves ski goggles and golf gloves and secret codes and I guess what I'm saying is I'd hate to interrupt a period of happy play between the Bickersons so maybe I'll let them off the hook. K is around... and I think he may have recovered sufficiently from Saturday's epic mountain bike ride (which, turns out, was more of a day-long exercise in hiking with his bike slung over his shoulder - no matter, it's all about the adventure anyway) to wield a weedwhacker.

Maybe I'd better go make some pancakes. Chore lists always go down better with a pancake chaser.