I am hesitant to pick the very last of our peaches.
It kind of feels as if I'm saying a long and sad goodbye, like when I used to have to tell Husband good-night back when we were just dating.

I'm drying a few of the ground peaches that I salvaged, and my swan song for the season will be a dozen jars of jam. (I hope!)

The tree was so beautiful this year and loaded with wonderful fruit. Maybe it was the extra cold winter?

We have had a good week. We were encouraged to visit the temple often, and I went about as much as I could. I helped out in Cheeseball and T-Bone's classrooms and I went out with Husband and his parents to make plans for the new office. Plus I processed peaches--jam, "butter," and just plain bottled. I did not, however, mop the floor yet (why bother when I'm just going to be spilling peaches all week?) and my house is a bigger mess than usual. But for the first time in a long while, I feel as if I haven't been wasting my time.

I took a break from politics and talk radio. I've listened to a lot of Dvorak, Debussey, and Berlioz. It's been great!

Now if I could just make smart use of the too many zucchinis we have...

Soccer season is finally over. We attended Janey's last game yesterday. I heard one of her coaches talking about her to someone else. He said, "See that little one? She scored goals in the last four games in a row." I was feeling so proud (or should I say tickeled pink) that it literally seemed like my heart was swelling. She didn't score yesterday, but she tried really hard.

I have now canned 14 jars of peaches! I am hoping to do at least one more batch. This was my first time ever canning anything by myself. What a relief that the jars sealed!

I helped out in T-Bone's class today. He didn't look at me once, but that's okay. It was fun to get to meet some of his classmates.

We're having sloppy joes tonight. The secret ingredient is yesterday morning's cracked wheat (maybe 1 cup to 2+ pounds of ground beef so it's not doing much).

We are hoping that Husband has found the spot for his office. I'm trying not to get too excited in case it doesn't work out.

Oh, I finished Austenland. I enjoyed it quite a bit. She has the phrase "Jane Austen immersion therapy" somewhere in the book and I could have sworn that I was the first to use it. Guess I was wrong....

The mornings are cold, it's wonderful.
School is going well so far. I am grateful that everyone is happy to be learning and it seems that all the teachers are going to be good.
Goose misses her siblings. We are learning how to play with Janey's old Loving Family dollhouse.
We're not sure when to harvest T-Bone's watermelons. How do you know when they're done? Guess I could google it.

I've read several books the past few weeks. The best, by far, was The Book Thief . I also thought Life as We Knew It and The Giver were very creditable and gave me a lot to think about. I checked out a compilation of Flannery O'Conner and Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. I've glanced at those books, but I'm not sure I'm going to read them. It's always hard to slide back to literay novels when I've been dallying with Young Adult fiction. Flannery O'Connor's view of man somehow tires me. I'm sure she thinks she's authentic but I must like something more rosy. Maybe I should give Jude another try. I guess I don't embrace books were marriage is something to be escaped or be saved from.
Let's face it, I've never been open-minded. I couldn't even get through Gloria Steinem's lament that Palin is no Hillary. (Yeah Gloria, she got elected on her own merits and not because of her husband!) I have a hard time ingesting material that wants me to think differently than I do.

On a last agricultural note, I love Joy in the Garden for telling me a couple of weeks ago to plant spinach and peas. I took the seeds from my spring's crop of spinach and planted them and now I have a row of green and the promise of fresh spinach in a couple of weeks. I planted my old pack of peas which I neglected to plant in the spring and they're coming up too.

Okay, a final, final note: Next year, no petunias, just zinnias.