Today

Today my house is very, very quiet.



Kerry and the boys are gone with their Civil Air Patrol group (and Gunnar got to go along, too) to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, down in McMinnville, Oregon.  As if it wasn't exciting enough just to be around all those airplanes (even the Spruce Goose!) the museum also has an indoor water park.  Several of the slides start inside an actual 747 on the roof of the building. 

So, yah, it's pretty much boy heaven.

And I'm hanging out at home, enjoying... silence...  which is pretty much mom heaven.

It helps that the weather is gorgeous and the trees and bushes shout God's glory in bright colors.

Even hanging laundry is a joy with this surrounding me, and even above me.

The vine is Virginia Creeper, if you wondered.


I think this is my favorite tree in the yard.  I do love the hemlock, but this pink dogwood changes so, from season to season.

I suppose it's rare for us to have such a dry fall.  We don't often get to crunch through fallen leaves... our weather is usually a bit, well, soggy.

So we're reveling in these warm days of Indian summer, wishing we could store up some of this sunshine-and-over-seventy-degrees, and piling quilts on the beds for the crisp nights.

I think I need to soak up these beautiful, saturated colors too, to fortify myself for the long, gray, dark winter, just around the corner.

I've been busy sewing today, in preparation for celebrating four family birthdays tomorrow.  But I look out my window and can't stay at my work.

I'm not the only one who's been working hard...

O sun and skies and flowers of June,

Count all your boasts together,

Love loveth best of all the year

October's bright blue weather.

     - Helen Hunt Jackson