Must Be Late Summer

It must be late summer and almost fall.

We are eating from the garden.

(Picture peek-a-boo p.s.: If you haven't read The Penderwicks, it's a must. So, so good. We just read it together and absolutely _loved_ it.)

The black-eyed-Susans are blooming in the backyard.

Monsoon-like weather is coming to a close with its deep indigo clouds that roll in just about every afternoon.

I went to the first football game last Saturday, and made a peach pie with fresh peaches from the orchard the night before.

School has started again, with big changes in our house. (#hardbutgood)

And...the canning has begun.

Jamming and canning, to be precise.

Two weeks ago found the girls and I in the kitchen one night.

I was washing fresh raspberries and dumping them into a container where the girls were crushing them.

Mia was busy mixing the pectin mix with the berries, filling jars, and labeling them.

Benj came up in the middle of it and exclaimed, 

"I love when there's cooking going on in the kitchen at night!"

(My sentiments exactly, actually. There's something about the quiet of night time, an open back door with fresh air (or not), background tunes or just listening to crickets, and spending time together. It takes me to some fond places in my childhood and many, many conversations in the kitchen, late at night, with my dad. It's kind of strange, really, to be the parent now, and not the child.

What happened? How did it all go so fast?)

Benj pulled out a bowl, filled it with salsa, grabbed some chips, and ate while reading Calvin & Hobbes while the girls and I worked. 

Oh, and photo bombed.

And this week? 

When Claire and I dropped off the kids at school on Monday morning, we came home and watered the pots outside and cleaned up the kitchen.

But afterward, we went out to the garden because I knew we had tons of tomatoes in that happy mess of green.

We didn't even pick the vines clean, and this is what we came away with.

Had to get those done, too.

 So yeah...the kitchen has been a hot, steamy, sticky place this week as we've bottled quarts that we'll pull out for spaghetti sauce and soups during the rest of the year. 

They're getting older, and it's fun to be side by side, doing whatever.

Like last night. 

The kitchen was warm, more quarts of tomatoes were processing, 

made dinner, made cookie dough, 

had friends stop by unexpectedly and we ended up out on the deck as it got windy and started to rain.

It. was. lovely.

We ended up piling them in our car to drive them home, listening to the Indigo Girls. 

And when we got home? Those two girls and I went for a run.

It was raining, thundering, and lightning was occasionally torching the sky.

But we ran, even Claire, with her (comparatively) shorter legs.
She kept right up.

We talked and laughed and ran as it got dark.

The best.

Tomorrow is September 1st. 

I'm going to put fall on my mantle this weekend:

owls, nuts, a little glass pumpkin from Cape Cod that was a gift from my dad, golden yellow and orange ginkgo leaves, coppers and golds and browns, a sparkly black spider and small little witch hat to offer a Halloween tease.

And?

I'm gonna make a wreath for my front door out of dried putka pods, and then I think? I'll hang it with burlap ribbon.

Welcome to my favorite time of year.

(I've already been burning a cider candle, melting apple jack wax squares to fill my kitchen with that apple cinnamon smell, and I can tell the heat is on the brink of retreat.
All good things.)

Peaching

You know what I've noticed outside the last few evenings?

 A breeze.

It tells me fall is on the way.

I always feel like there's some kind of marking that the seasons are changing---whether it's a big late-summer thunderstorm or the way the air starts to feel different.

That's what I'm feeling at night.

And just yesterday I spied the first leaves turning on the mountains above my home.

And I could elaborate extensively on all the reasons I love fall, but I want to talk about peaches and orchard stands.

Cuz really, I wait all year for this time.

And as soon as I knew there was fresh fruit, I went and grabbed a box.

And really, mostly, just for this.

Fresh. Peach. Pie.

Freshfreakinpeachpie.

(#hallelujahandyesplease)

I had literally been thinking about it for months.

And it's pretty much gonna be on the reg for the next while until the peaches are gone.

There's actually one in the oven right now, for a gathering with friends tomorrow night.

And then there's already been some of this going down, too.

And, several batches of peach jam.  If you've never tried that, you're missing out.

Last week while the boys were off at karate one afternoon and my gal was playing with a friend, it was just me and my babe in the kitchen.

She was up to the table and I was busy preparing fruit trying to get a batch of jam finished before I had to leave to pick up the boys.

At one point I turned around and found her like this.

(And I'm just now sitting here trying to figure out what was all over her face.)

Let me just say that, if you have a toddler, 5 p.m. falling-asleep-naps are not your friend.

Why?

Cuz if they pull it off successfully, it means you won't get them to go to sleep for real 'til late that night.

So, what'd I do?

Woke her up, bribed her with ice cream and chocolate sauce, and put her in front of a Mary Poppins clip on the iPad so she'd stay awake.

Ice cream and chocolate at 5:15, and before dinner?

Why, you ask?

Because I'm pretty much cool like that.

(Okay, maybe it was just cuz I was a desperate woman on a mission.)

Oh So Many Things... (and a billion links to take you a billion different places)

One of the things I love about late summer and into the fall are these bright yellow lovelies. If there was a color that's a precursor to the amber of autumn, it would be this. They delight me every time I see them. I think of husking and harvest and fields and sunflowers and quietly loud patches of wildflowers.

Last Thursday I spotted the first small blotches of color up on the mountains that I have been watching for anxiously for the past couple weeks. Yay, you are here!! In the next week the kids and I will be driving up the canyon, bags in hand, to gather the color to make one of these for my front door (and shout out to my cute baby boys). I. can't. wait.

It's crisp and downright chilly sometimes in the morning and evening now. I think we can just about take the window coolers out.

Fall has come creeping into my house, too.


Lately I've been loving my

• mulled cider candle
• watching period dramas done by BBC
• rereading of How Green Was My Valley (LOVE) for book group next week
  
• the fact that General Conference is less than two weeks away (also see here)!
  
• the tomatoes I've canned from my garden (which in this photo taken last week is looking a bit shabby -- I gave it some love this morning and tidied it up). I picked 72! green chiles this morning, a pile of jalapenos, five green peppers, a bucket full of tomatoes (more canning ahead for this week), a bag of beans, a big cantaloupe, and am going back out to dig up some beets to roast for dinner. Also need to harvest some honkin zucchinis to shred and freeze for future cold winter days when the smell of cinnamon and cloves will make me happy as zucchini bread bakes. And some of those corn stalks will soon take residence on the front porch with some pumpkins.

And I'm anticipating making

• jalapeno avocado cream soup and
• jalapeno/green chile lime jelly using the green chiles and jalapenos from the garden

If you've never tried jalapeno lime jelly, order some of this. We LOVE it, especially on our burgers, but it's good on whatever (I think they sell different heat levels, too). Scott was saying a week or so ago that we ought to make a jalapeno chutney or something with our mass of peppers, and then I suggested we try to make a jelly since we love this stuff so much.

So, folks, that's our project tonight. After dinner and FHE and helping my dad get some new chairs home he just purchased, Scott and I will be chef-ing it up in the kitchen, busily concocting. I might just have to blog about that, too.

AND...I'm oh so excited. I've begun a project.


Our friends gave us this dollhouse. I was forewarned that dollhouse furniture (and families and everything else) are expensive. When I was talking to my sister, she told me about Rachel's dollhouse she'd done for her girls last year. She sent me links to what Rachel had blogged about it, and I was so inspired by this, this, this and this.

I went and bought all kinds of fun paper and mod podge and accessories to decorate my dollhouse. Sticker letters. Mirrors. A lime green tin for the bathtub. Adorable metal picture frames. Brightly colored friendly wooden animals. Some dollar-store dollhouse furniture that's gonna be spray painted all different happy colors.

It took me two nights of debating and another trip to the craft store to decide which papers were going to go together in each room (so many fun choices!). I took the doors and roof off, taking care not to permanently wreck the structure. Went to work taping off portions to paint certain walls bright yellow (the same yellow in her bedroom).

So now I've got paper cutting and modpodging to do, doll furniture to paint, bedding and shower curtain to make, ordering a kitchen set (don't know which one yet), decorating walls of the house, and purchasing a family (debating between a few, but here's one in the running). Got to come up with some kind of a toilet for the bathroom and maybe some accent rugs and I really want an old fashioned pram made by calico critters for those cute little twin babies.

Basically, I'm obsessed. I am so excited about it that I oh so hope Mia will love it too. I'm thinking it will make a good birthday gift, and I'm pretty sure the boys will play with it too.

I'm gonna blog the play by play so you can see it develop, too.

Wishing you many, many happy returns of the day during this gorgeous September.

Working on Applesauce

Today I was sitting out in the sunshine on the grass in the backyard while all the kids were napping, loving the feel of it between my toes. I had a cardboard box with apples and a plastic bag for all the skins. As I was peeling away, I got a text from Scott:

"How are you doing?"

I kept going at the apples. After peeling, quartering and coring a nice tall pot full of apples to cook down for applesauce, I texted him back:

"I have been doing apples like a madwoman."

And then I started to think about what that word almost looks like in your mind -- the energy, the craziness, the got-to-get-this-done busyness amid the love. And I was reminded of this story in February 2008's issue of Martha Stewart Living. I only wished I could have been stripped down and sweating too, like her grandma making the pierogi. Seriously, when I read this for the first time, I immediately shared it outloud with my dad who was close by, and had tears through my laughter. Sweet, I tell you. Sweet. I hope you can read it and crack up too.