A Poem of Thanksgiving

For Mom whose birthday card I did not write in this year.  Sorry.  And for Dad who has followed boots, walked in boots, and now leads boots.

Winter’s Table


Eyes crack open with the dawn.

The frost arrived this morning -
outside, breath hangs upon the air.

Boots trod over spent fields-
muscles, move stiff after labor.

The land rests empty -
Sabbath for field, beast and man.

Boots step across the foot log -
walk round the house before breakfast.

Hands crack open the cellar door.

Damp dirt floor still holds up sagging shelves -
jars of tomatoes, squash, and beans.

Potatoes and apples all safe in their bins -
a whole summer's work shut up tight…

waiting for winter's table.

Where's Jonathan?

That's a question I've been hearing incessantly around here for two days.  Now I can show them:

Jonathan is camping in Pageland, SC with his troop.  Mr. Busse who you see here has been kind enough to welcome the scouts on his property for the weekend.

Jonathan is getting a bit of practice with ropes.  Here he is tossing a rope at a target.  Together the scouts also built a bridge across a ditch that they had to walk across with all of their gear.

Jonathan is also getting a bit more target practice - at watermelons and balloons floating on a pond.  He's getting pretty comfortable shooting.  This was one of Mr. Busse's guns.  A .22 but not as acurate as Jonathan is used to shooting.  The sights were about 6 inches too high so they were having to adjust their aim.  I know he enjoyed the target practice, but is really ready to take a crack at a few fluffy tailed rodents.

He'll be home somtime tomorrow and all of the questions will stop as the little ones all listen to his stories.  Jesse went with David to visit the campsite today.  He came home really excited and can't wait to be a Boy Scout instead of a Cub Scout.

Overheard

We're getting ready for winter here.  Items on the list are: finish stacking and covering the wood, clean the chimney, get drapes for the sliding glass door (finally), cut some of my beautiful coleaus to root indoors through the winter, and find some white row cover material to protect the garden from frosts.  It is supposed to frost tonight and again this weekend.  I have lettuces, cabages that are about half grown, and mustard almost four inches high that we are going to try and overwinter.  I called Renfrow Hardware a local store in Matthews to see if they have row cover fabric.  While the man at the counter went to check their stock I overheard a conversation in the background:

A man's voice over much laughter, "I wouldn' have a TV!  I stopped watchin' when I didn't get no reception from my antennae.  I didn' watch much before 'n now I don' watch any."  More laughter. 

Renfrow's... I wonder if I like to go there so much because of the kind of people I run into there.  A little glimpse of what home used to be like many years ago.  Times change, sometimes some people don't.  I like that.

LABOR Day

 This is what we did for fun on our holiday!  David took these pictures from the deck after he just finished splitting the two hackberry trees. (Thanks Papaw for letting us borrow the wood splitter!) We still have a sweetgum and a sycamore from the back to split but they weren't as large as the sycamore in the front and the two hackberries.

Here you can see the amount of wood we have stacked. I'm guessing we have two times this much left to go - at least! And just in case you were wondering I was tireder than I looked.

As you can see it was a family affair. I did actually enjoy the day (and the previous week) of working in the wood. It brought back many memories. I grew up in a home solely heated with wood heat. So a significant task each year was to make sure we had enough wood for the winter. Putting the wood stove back into the fireplace was one of the first things we did after buying our house. And we haven't regretted it. We stay toasty warm all winter and don't hesitate to pull the electrical bill out of the mail box at all. We're still working on an economical way to keep cool in the summer - it's kind of tough with so many of our windows broken and unable to open!

Great Knitting Video Podcast

Letsknit2gether

This particular episode is 2nd of two episodes at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. If you watch the entire episode you can see the founder of Ravelry way back when they were only testing...

Workshop News

I haven't posted in such a long time and I took even longer to try and decide how I should fill in the gap - what should be the first post after such a long time. Life has gone on even thought blogging hasn't. For a while I blogged in my head - Oh, I could write about that, this would be good to share, I want to post this picture, etc.

Now it has been so long that if I don't post I think I will be in danger of never posting again! So the latest news around here first and then maybe I'll post a few pics of some things that have happened in the past few months.

Once again we have workshop news - check out this post over at Rockler. You continue to amaze me, David.

Faithfulness

It is always a little sad to me that one of the first three things each of the boys has learned is to say bye. It seems each one has learned more early than the last - it is practiced nearly every day - a chorus of cheerful byes and a frantic waving of hands and running to peek out the window or chase down the driveway as Daddy goes to work. Only rarely is it a sad goodbye for them. They can say goodbye this way - cheerfully, with all of themselves because he always comes back...