October weekend

I spent a lot of time thinking about candles this weekend. In my short time as a housekeeper I have learned many things. One of them is that if you have a candle lit where people can see it, they tell you that they love the smell of your candle. If you hide the candle, people tell you they love the smell of your home. It is a small semantic difference that makes a big impact on me. So I hide my candles.

 

 

I filled the house with the artificial yet oh-so-neccessary fragrance of fall candles, baked a carrot cake, worked on my stitching, overheard some college football, and pruned the butterfly bush. We got just enough accomplished that we didn't feel slothful but not so much that we got cheated out of a restful weekend. The long awaited saffron crocuses came up and I plucked all their yummy fronds without taking the time to photograph them intact. Oh well. There will be others. The moment called for immediate response. To top it all off, we spent sweet time in the company of dear friends and what do you know? In celebration of my birthday, I received my first Wood Wick candle and it is lovely. I'm not even going to hide it. 

Seed saving and such

I am happy to report that I'm on the mend and Julian seems to have come through these past 10 days unscathed. Turns out it was "just" a sinus infection but its honestly the most ill I've ever been in my life. I missed five days of work and cut short my birthday weekend in Va. to return to the doctor first thing on Monday morning. The lingering cough is now my only remnant... that and the undone house chores.

Speaking of chores and one that is made particularly difficult by a lingering cough - I've been trying to be intentional about seed saving for next year. I've collected seeds from all over; from the Sarah J. Duke Botanical Gardens (prickly pear cactus and water iris) to South Middle School where our church meets (cosmos, zinnias, misc wildflowers).

In total, I have amassed seeds of coneflower, columbine, redbud, oak, zinnia, cosmos, daisy, butterfly weed, iris, daylily, marigold, cilantro, sunflower, dill, basil, clematis (what a weird seed!), prickly pear, rose, peas, lettuce, and snapdragons. I keep them in bead bags I get from the craft store and them file them away in an old floppy disk storage box. I am always entertained by how the seeds are a perfect fit for the archaic and seemingly obsolete box.

There is no better way to get free plants and often they are colors and varieties that I'm not likely to come by in a garden center. I don't know why but I always seem so shocked at the cost of seed packets - $3.50 for tiny little grains of dust? Besides, acorns are not just nuts. They are FREE OAK TREES, people. Plant them!

In addition to being free, I'm really enjoying that the seed collection process adds a new awareness and appreciation for the season. I grow basil every year but, just yesterday, I took the time to sit down and dissect my browning basil plant to figure out how the plant works and where the seeds come from. Fascinating.

It is tempting to look in the garden and be discouraged by the end of the growing season but this year I am looking out my window and there it is - seed season - happening right before my eyes. Love it.

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Linking up with Little House in the Suburbs .

Birthday Week

It's my birthday week and I'm very, very sick. The whole episode is messing with my brain. All I want to do is huddle in a germ-y pile with down comforters and bunny slippers, drink tea and eat pie. That did not happen today - it was 80F outside. So, I just laid around the way we did as children, craving a box fan and {not} watching soap operas during the dog days of summer. If it is fall, no one is telling.

I'm not keeping up with this journal much, in part because there is too much to do elsewhere but also too many things I'm holding very close to my chest. Changes, they are a-coming, but we do not know the when's and where's. Only the why's... and they take so much energy.

"For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." 1 Cor 2:11