Green Brain

I have Green-Brain. Its that time of year. There are any number of things sprouting and greening and budding in our sunroom which is very cheerful. This is a good time of year to be one of my houseplants. I'm dreaming of gardens and gardening and yet feeling so cold averse that I want to spend all my time snuggled up indoors. All of that amounts to much more attentive, loving care for the plant members of the household right about now. I am clinging to each little chartreuse leaf and unfolding blossom to tide me over until the warm comes back and until the baby is willing to me wander farther than a foot from him with my pruning shears and my trowel.

Almost every night I am carting the clanging metal compost can outside to our backyard pile and dumping more veggie trimmings and fruit cores. I feel very motivated to grow the heap, thinking about all the earthworms that I hope are churning away in the core of the pile, making me sweet fertilizer for filling up anemic raised beds, and tucking around my sad strawberry plants. Its a good time of year to be anything gardeny that wants my attention. Green leaves, and curling tendrils and produce of all kinds from my own land are what I am dreaming about at night, craving at the library, and turning my camera on whenever I look around for subjects.

Pom is not a fan of plants, unless he can eat them. He puts everything in his mouth and is scooting around backwards making himself angry at the way everything gets father and farther away every time he moves. And he is starting to make stabs at standing and stepping a little with hands to hold. The doctor tells me he is 5th percentile for weight and height but I find it hard to be too concerned, when he's so impossibly round and happy.  He's just a small, plump, happy man.

Falling Along

The dogwood in our neighbor's yard is turning a misty burgundy. I can see it well out the window to my left when I sit here on the second floor at our computer even though on ground level, standing in the garden, picking tomatoes view of it is entirely blocked by the large viburnum hedge that divides our yards. The dogwoods are changing, the bees are going into a genuine work-halt at nighttimes now, the cucumbers have petered out completely and gone to a new life on the compost pile and the boys and I had our first little hearth fire this morning during our story hour. We are on to the chicken roasting season of the year. Time for baking and interior design and teetering stacks at the library every week.

I have begun a Pinterest page all about Autumn pleasures (so much fun!) and am working to carve out time again for reading. I find it more difficult suddenly with so much school happening. Am also finding that fall means more volume of clothing to wash and put away since everyone's wearing layers, cold weather in the morning and night and then hot by peak of day.....clothes, clothes everywhere. I feel like I spend all day collecting things and tossing them basementward for washing. On the upside, my new attention to life indoors here has meant that I am getting into a housekeeping rhythm for the first time in my life. I am sweeping the kitchen floor, wiping down the counters, swiping out the bathroom sinks and getting a little laundry moving, almost without fail every morning. Not bad for 10 years of housewifery lessons. Finally getting a little somewhere!

And now I'm off to heat up the oven for roasting dinner and take a quick breeze out to the garden to pull old plants and put in a few more fall crops....better late than never.