Guest photos by Mr. Suite... and, sad to say, one by me

Madeleine and Sarah on their way back home. (Silly. Makes it sound as though they walked 350 miles.) The girls and their dad stopped at the lighthouse in Trinidad. And bookstores in Eureka and Arcata. And probably a lot of Dutch Brothers coffee stands. My little girls have discovered the (decaffeinated) iced mocha.

My husband took lots of pictures of this field for me. That was romantic, wasn't it?

And then we arrive at the produce bowl shot that I took. Does anyone else have too much liberal arts background? Um, say, do you notice anything about the arrangement? Of course I only noticed the, er, resemblance, after downloading the photos and by then the produce was long gone.

In actual farm news:

Our well is limping along and did not collapse as I had feared. Extra drama? Never. My garden, however, is on life support. We abandoned the corn and we're watering the tomatoes, squash and cucumbers with buckets. I feel a little like I've been kicked off of reality TV's farm girl channel. If there were such a thing.

The fruit trees, my flowerbeds, and the whole vegetable garden for that matter, are surrounded by deep blankets of straw mulch. The temperatures here continue to set record highs. A massive forest fire to the south of us makes the air too thick to breathe.

The horses paw at their water trough, splashing themseves with water to cool down. We place frozen water bottles in the rabbit cages each morning and the bunnies stretch out against them throughout the day. The chickens are on a layoff until cooler weather allows them to return to work. (Heh, heh, I crack myself up. Layoff? Not laying eggs?)

Well, it was funny in my own head.