Playing catch (up)

How was your summer vacation?

I'm taking it as a sign of a good summer that I am, once again, not ready. Last week at the swimming hole I sat with a friend watching the children splash about picking blackberries from the overhanging vines. Feet in the cool water, with pebbles massaging our toes and the laughter of eight or nine swimmers entertaining our ears, we watched the first of the turning leaves float to the water's surface and skim downstream. Our shady spot will be exposed to the autumn sky in a month or two.

But we'll be inside with books and tablets and schedules to make the gas gauge sigh.

How not to make a two-month catch-up letter a series of "been there, done that?' How to capture the feeling of summer? We took some drives. We splashed in the creek and swam in our "secret" swimming hole. We went to a big family wedding in the redwoods and we went to the movies with friends.

Madeleine stretched her musical theatre skills with singing/dancing/acting camps and Sarah attended a ballet intensive and a melodrama performance camp. The big girls were in our local heritage parade too, on the Storybook Theatre float. Sarah was the blue fairy from Pinocchio, reprising her role from last spring's performance. Maddy was Tiger Lily and Grace was a mermaid, both from Peter Pan. I broke three sewing machine needles on Grace's costume but she glittered like an undersea princess. Salvador and Laura caught a lot of candy and waved at all the floats. I ran after the Storybook float with my camera and Mr. Suite was impressed with my speed in pursuit of the photo.

Then! Grace worked on a new quilt top and on her model horse barn. Mr. Suite bought her a miter saw and she uses it with more confidence than do I. Grace and Laura won ribbons at the fair. Grace exhibited a blue-ribbon bookhouse and her handmade puppet collection, also a blue ribbon winner. Laura showed a Lego coffee delivery boat of her own design (blue!) and her pony collection (red).

The whole family plus some friends hung out at the fair and watched the steam engine demonstrations. We ate caramel corn and drank lemonade and I regretted that but not in the baking hot moment.

Mr. Suite and I had a few date nights. We celebrated our anniversary -- 22 years -- with a Tom Petty concert where almost every song made me feel younger. We hiked the mountain above our house a few times and took photos at the river bar where he grew up and learned to drive. We drove over a floating bridge and visited farm stands and old haunts and longtime friends.

On the pet front, Laura has two guinea pigs. I am informed they are not rodents. Charlie the Spaniel took a brief vacation with another family whose mama works at the self-sustainability workshop on our road. He went camping by the lake and then came home and we were very, very glad. Murphy the Bernese went up the mountain with Maddy and Mr. Suite on a hike and came back down in the Suburban. I understand the hip joint pain.

Maddy and Sam cut new trails in the woods above our pasture. We made hay in record amounts and two teen boys with more energy and bigger appetites than imaginable helped get all eight tons in the loft before it rained. We picked blackberries and visited friends. We hosted a mini craft and swimming day camp for friends. We took some more drives. I am gathering rose hips for wreaths and tea. I am gathering the school books and calendars and my wits for another year of sharp pencils and sharper minds.

And they danced

The girls finished nine months of six-day-a-week dance classes with this thing called a recital.

I cried through nearly the entire thing.

From the second row the click of the Nikon shutter
punctuated their steps.

Madeleine was in ten different pieces.

Sarah and Maddy both had their first pointe performance.

Hip hop was a surprise favorite.

Tap was a crowd pleaser.

I love this stuff.

And I try not to count the recitals we have left

stretching before us in beauty.

(When classically trained ballet dancers

go hip hop it will surprise you.)

 Grace was a bookish ballerina.

Considering carefully a year of quiet work.

Laura was a ballet diamond in the cutest deck of cards.

And a teddy bear tap dancer.

Grace also got jazzy.

We have a vocal recital before summer starts in earnest.

Then a few dance intensives and a couple of theatre camps

and a lot of backyard camping.

A wedding.

Swimming in the creek.

Playing with the ponies.

Summer.

If I Were August

If I were August I'd make a note.

Summer is notoriously fleeting.

I wouldn't want to miss a minute.

Calendula and yarrow, dance and baseball, sewing and sky watching.

These notes of August make summer a poem woven of dried grasses and lake days.

I'd try not to make a paragraph, even.

Because in formation of a thesis one could lose the essence,
whole and sweet like a raspberry warm from the vine.

 Rather to jot those notes on whatever paper or palm lies nearby.

If I were August I'd make a note to revisit on days of mist and cool.

That the summer, days of wine and roses, could warm that later moment too.

A time capsule of sunshine.

Dogs and other happinesses

Today as I quickly upload these snaps of late-summer fun and games I have six students at my school table. It's transition time.

We are still jogging through the last bits of summer chez Suite but the autumn rituals are tapping in for a good run.

A cozy wrap after bedtime bath.

Some wildflowers gathered for seed.

Mommy's seasonless dreams of pictures wherein everyone is smiling angelically and no one is pulling anyone else's hair or last nerve. It's the tradition that transcends cultural and national boundaries. (And you thought that was music?)

A fond farewell to summer

Pardon me while I wipe the sticky sweat from my brow and then again while I smack that same brow in remembrance of my blog... amongst the canning and homeschooling and general chaos that rules my September, the computer can get a bit in the way. I do, however, have facebook and all the evil time-wasting that has to offer. So there.

Our summer was fun but now it's time for the best season of all (and I totally reserve the right to change my mind at the beginning of each new season): autumn!

This year we are homeschooling four out of five of our children (that Salvador, such a slacker, is waiting until he can walk to learn to read) plus two neighbor boys. It's a full schoolroom and I love it. Today's haiku lesson was mighty educational, for me, in that boys apparently write about very different subjects than do girls. A-hem. Let's just say that counting syllables regarding bathroom humor is funny to a 10-year-old boy I know. Very funny.

We have two new doggies Chez Suite and they are sweet indeed. Bernese Mountain bundles of joy, they weigh in at over 100 pounds apiece. (What was I thinking with the dog begging, you wonder. Me too.) Murphy and Molly do not prefer this extended summer-like weather at all. They pant and, let's face it, they drool. It's an ocean of drool in my laundry room currently. And I can't use scatter rugs because they eat them. Also? They prefer the horse paddocks to the dog run. This makes perfect sense in light of the fact that they eat more than do the ponies.

The little red school across the road from us is closed forever and it is very, very sad. I miss the passing of the morning bus telling me it's time to wake up, and I miss the gathering of country kids stopping at our picket fence on their walk home. I miss the whole one-room-schoolhouse feel of our rural community and we didn't even attend there.

The country didn't fix its financial woes while I took a bloggy break. Go figure.

I made it to the beach just once this summer, and barely in time for sunset. I've decided the fall is better for ocean-going anyway. (See how I can make lemonade?) We did swim at the lake 10 times, which exactly met Sarah's goal. I aim to please. And the lake is close and free.

We celebrated a half-dozen amazing birthdays and a couple of wonderful wedding anniversaries. At one memorable 25th anniversary party the bride wore her Tevas with her wedding gown and walked her Golden Retriever to the picnic table reception. And at one equally wonderful party for a four-year-old I love, in excess of 30 children ate cake with no artificial colors nor artificial flavors and it was a measure of their love for Eddie and his dietary restrictions that no one said a word. Then at my father's 60th birthday party his siblings traveled across state lines to surprise him and that is difficult to do. Surprising my dad, I mean. We'll try it again for his 80th. And that is perfectly safe to say here since he doesn't read this blog. (Right, Dad?)

We (of course, this part is the royal we) put gorgeous new fencing around the horse paddocks

and Dolly hasn't broken out once since then. Oh. Except for the time someone left the beautiful new lifetime gate wide open. Just that once. And it only took half a day to catch the dang pony. Not that I minded.

It wasn't a breakout summer, but it was my summer. We loved it. How was yours?

Finally, the blackberries ... a birthday... and a little ice cream

Our summer moves more quickly, and more slowly, than any I've remembered. It was late this year, the weather in Oregon not sure what to do with itself. Kinda matched my mood, frankly.

My physical self rushes around, driving country roads on the way to camp. after. camp. after camp.

My all-too-active inner self soaks in the sunshine and reflects, light and otherwise.

This summer marks my dad's 60th birthday, my son's first birthday. My girls are playing multiple instruments apiece (we're apparently starting up a traveling family band).

I miss my grandmother something fierce this season. She and I used to pick blackberries every year. Our stained fingers filled the pails and she filled my mind with stories of her growing up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin; growing up in the Great Depression, having her first children in a log cabin, moving bravely across the country to San Francisco to raise all four babies through wars and an uncertain economy and civil unrest and gardening and on the whole living an amazing, rich life.

Yep. I miss my grandmother. So much so that a visit from her daughters, my dear aunts, brought me to tears. Just hearing Sandra's voice, so like her mother's, and seeing Pat's expressions, so like my grandmother's... this was the essence of summer fruit, sweet but tart. We wait a long time for that first bucket of berries, and then the ice cream and the pies and the cobblers crowd together so thickly that we think we can freeze some of it to enjoy later. But we can't. We have to gobble it up, this life. We have to take it as it comes ripe and say, this is what it is to live in the moment. Tomorrow's joys will be better, and fresher, if they're uniquely tomorrow's.

So this week we are enjoying the last camp (can you see me, ready to slump?) of the summer. Madeleine and Grace are fiddling around. (Har har.) They are playing Cajun music and loving it. The camp is across the road, run by the rural arts, and I am loving that. No driving. No driving myself crazy packing up the whole family. (Did I mention no driving?)

Paradoxically to my whole fresh fruit/live the now theme: Next week we may start canning, although I will likely have to buy produce at the farmstands since my garden has suffered the effects of a late start to the growing season and a general chaos in my being.

Not that I'm dramatic much.

I have missed you, friends. I hope your summer is as delicious and fresh as ours has been.

More pictures worth thousands... of words

...because honestly...

I can't keep up.

Camps, glampouts, road trips.

The very occasional backyard nap.

More family drives.

A few farm projects.

A theater debut.

Homemade and homegrown pesto. Bruschetta. Much bettah.

Chicks become pullets.

Ponies become pets.

Roses reach higher.

Friendships blossom.

Characters develop.

Grandparents are made, not born.

We heat up, we cool down.

Sometimes speed up, then slow down.

We realize: It's the journey.