I’ve just come in from gathering up all of my potted plants by flashlight and plopping buckets over the tenderest of my green beloveds. I kindled our third fire of the day as I was beginning this post.

Sundays are the only mornings that Steve is home. I take this rare gift as an opportunity to stay snuggled up in bed with our baby, for as long as humanly possible, knowing that my early-bird son (Iain) soon followed by his drowsy, but afraid-to-miss-a-moment brother (Elijah Rain) are safe in the care of my ultra early-bird husband. They relish this time together and I, a life-long night owl floundering at reformation, am more then happy to not have to bounce out of bed first thing.

In the last month or so, they’ve taken to building a fire, in our stone-ringed fire-pit, which is a pleasant sort of thing for me to wake up to.

This morning I was restless, and creep away from my still snoozing babe to sneak in a bit of time knitting by the fire. Even with the blaze my hands were too stiff to work the stitches well. When we came in for breakfast we decided that a fire was needed inside as well, as I had no desire to change our little one in such a chill. And so we had our first fire of the season. The house soon became very pleasant and cheery and I was sorely tempted to devote the rest of the day to knitting by the fire. I did finally rouse myself, granted it wasn’t until after I had finished the glove I was working on. One of our favorite local harvest festivals was today, and as much as it pained me to leave home, I knew that we would enjoy ourselves once we were there. Steve stayed behind to help B the Builder start sheathing the roof.

The children and I did have a lovely time. There was a fabulous story-teller performing. I’m awfully fond of a good story! We had a lot of fun playing with a huge collection of home-made hula-hoops. Galen was hilarious in his attempts to mimic us. Eventually he took to picking the hoop up from the inside and walking around in circle with it! We had maple cotton candy. They use pure maple sugar in the machine instead of that pink chemical crap. I’m sure that it’s still dreadfully awful for us (so much sugar!), but it’s such a treat! We came home with two varieties of gourmet garlic to plant this fall and a special variety of Italian beans to plant in the spring. I can’t wait to get it all in the ground!

Now if you will excuse me, I have a dragon’s wing to mend and my lesson plans to work out for tomorrow, before I collapse into bed. 5:45 a.m. is going to be here awfully soon!