Summer

My goodness how time flies! Where did our summer go? Over the last few weeks we have gone from blistering temps to the comfortable low to mid 80's. Fall is in the air. You can feel it with the cooling in the evening as the sun sets and in the moist dewy mornings when the sun rises. The sun is setting sooner and rising later. Of course the wheat harvest is rapidly coming to a close as well. Fitting I suppose with the easing of the temperatures and shortening of the days. Although I will miss the long summer days and the warmth summer offers, I look forward to what the fall season will bring. The plants will be able to rest from the long scorching dry summer days, the evenings are full of a moist earthy scent, fireplace smoke drifts in the air adding it's spicy smell to the soft earthy scent and the dust goes away. Everything around seems to take a long deep breath and embrace the ease that fall brings with it. Soon the leaves will change and the cool refreshing evening breeze of summer will change to the crisp subtle wind of fall and bring with it the giant bright white cotton ball clouds that gallop and chase each other across the sky. We still have some warm summer days left and I intend to savor these days and save up all the warmth that I can. I will most certainly miss the warm summer sun and long lazy days of summer.

Harvest

One of he big guys. It is not uncommon to see 3 or 4 of these big guys  cutting in a row.

       Harvest. It is a way of life here. It is what our small town revolves around. The ground is tilled and prepared for seeds. The seeds are planted and then they grow. Then the wait. The wait for the wheat to be just right to cut. Then it happens.The wheat turns and becomes ready for harvest. There is nothing but harvest. That is it. Nothing else happens until all the wheat is harvested. Hundreds of thousands of acres of wheat. There are some peas and garbonzo beans to harvest too but the majority is wheat. As far as the eye can see 360 degrees. The big combines come out of their resting places and set to work cutting the wheat. Fine white chaff dust sparkles in the air and floats on the breeze. Settling on everything. Not a surface is left untouched. Only good part about this is I don't dust anything until after harvest is done. Usually about 3 weeks. I learned my lesson early. If you dust in the morning, by late afternoon things look as if you never touched them. So we just wait. Hay fever sets in too. Traffic jams occur often. When it's time to move the equipment to the next field that needs cutting the roads are how these big monsters get to where they are going. Sometimes they get a ride on a big trailer but are so wide they hang way over the bed of the trailer and there is only one speed, slow. These traffic jams make me smile. Grain trucks are on the roads pounding gears to get their heavy loads to the elevators and then back to the fields again for another load. This is hot, sweaty and dirty work. For some, harvest may be a time of hanging fall decorations and trees leaves changing color. Here harvest is 3 or so weeks of hard work. 3 or so weeks of combines, tractors, grain trucks and farmers working non stop to get the wheat into the safe clutches of the grain elevators. Then and only then is there rest and celebration. What a celebration there is when it is an end of harvest celebration. Just as the urgency to get things harvested is a viable "feeling" in the air of daily activity, so is there a tangible "feeling" of relief and celebration in the air when the harvest is complete. In a word, HARVEST. It sums it all up.                                                                        

The First Egg

I will let this sweet egg be the words for this post.

Our first egg from our girls. Can't wait to see what we find tomorrow.

A Good Visit

     Mid July. More guests to arrive. This time our guests were my Sister and her family. It was so good to see all of them again. Too much time had passed since our last visit. My Sister did most of the cooking while she was here so I got a much needed break and lots of great food. We had so much food we ended up putting some of it away in the freezer. My Sister and Brother-in-law got a much needed break away from their day to day routine and were able to rest and relax. We had great conversations and good quality time together. The cousins sunk into life with each other with out missing a beat and acted more like siblings then cousins. My Sister and I spent as much time as was possible by each others side trying to get as much of the other as we possibly could. Knowing that our next visit with each other wouldn't be soon enough. We are so alike, we know what each others thought is before it is said but then again so completely different from each other that we can provide each other with a different outlook on a situation. We are lucky to have each other. I was lucky to have them visit.