More loose ends

Although I did write yesterday, I got to it so late, I didn’t bother posting. For the record, I got 101 words yesterday and 160 today.

So many things to juggle — SFWA work on the OPPM, invoicing for copyediting, finishing up an application for the Sustainable Arts Foundation’s award for writers who are also parents, taking the kids shopping for shoes (and pants for the girl, as she outgrew last year’s), back to school night to meet teachers, school paperwork — and that’s just today and yesterday. As I said, lots of loose ends, and this week is just about tying some of them off.

One of the girl’s homework assignments is to bring leaves to school so they can classify them. Maybe I should send a hosta leaf with her.

Mushrooms!

In our yard. Which is not fantastic, but not exactly surprising, either. And gives an indication of just how much rain we’ve been getting.

Anyway, not a lot on the new word front today, and what there was, I didn’t count, as I was working through edits on Siren Circle and hence, both adding and deleting as I went. I may add some words later on book 3, Troll Tunnels.

Meanwhile, enjoy these pictures.large mushroom

smaller mushroom

mushroom gills

Rainy Mondays

hosta leaf

Every now and then, I think I should water the yard. I worry about my blueberry plants (now with a dozen berries!) or the petunia that my daughter’s class gave me. And then, this being Pennsylvania, it pours. We’ve been here almost a dozen years, and I still find it weird — will always find it slightly tone-deaf — that people can worry about a drought if it doesn’t rain for two months (usually July and August). Two months does not a drought make. (It does, however, lead to times when it’s not ridiculous of me to wonder whether I should water the plants.)
Continue reading

Doe a deer

This weekend, I saw two deer nibbling at the apples still on the tree. I don’t know where the rest of the herd is, but at least a couple of them are around and doing fine. (I’m guessing it’s just been such a mild fall that they had plenty to eat elsewhere so hadn’t gotten this far yet.)

What are you grateful for today?

Apples and trees

Today’s post is both a bit of gratitude, and a bit of “What’s actually going on?”

The branches sagging to the ground.

The branches sagging to the ground.


I’ve posted pictures before of the apple tree in back, weighted down with apple blossoms. We’ve picked apples from it once or twice, but we don’t usually get most of them — we have all kinds of wildlife, from blue jays and robins to deer. So when I really looked at the tree last week and saw how weighed down it was by apples, I was quite surprised.

However, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I took the kids out to pick apples this weekend. We got several quarts of apples, and the tree still looks untouched.

Look at how many there are!

Look at how many there are!

What we've picked so far

What we’ve picked so far

Sliced apple

Sliced apple

I started off with applesauce. I’ll do apple butter as well, maybe a couple of apple pies (although the girl doesn’t like them), and some apple compost jelly (made with the peels and cores)… the possibilities are almost endless.

But I do wonder why I haven’t seen the deer around at all, much less why they haven’t lightened the tree as they usually do.

Some of what's still left on the tree

Some of what’s still left on the tree

What are you grateful for this week?

Kid tested, wildlife approved

Unlike most (all?) of our neighbors, we don’t use herbicides. Thus, our back lawn has plenty of clover, buttercups, wild strawberries, violets (though they’re past their bloom now), purslane, and I’m not sure what else. Looks mostly green when I look out into the humid world. It’s soft enough for the kids to play on. Works for me.

Also works for the deer. One of the local does came by for dinner last night and breakfast this morning.
deer under the apple tree


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