What a summer it has been.

Strangely wonderful, strangely defeating by turns.

Exciting new opportunities have presented themselves, writing for a local newspaper and magazine, shooting more portrait sessions, a wedding. Canning like crazy with the wealth of chokecherries, zucchini, and tomatoes. Baking bread, brewing kombucha, fermenting milk kefir. Productivity and fruitfulness.

A freak hailstorm wiped out my garden a few weeks ago (thankfully my greenhouse survived). I lost four of my precious cats to poison before we figured out where it was coming from. I grafted four TSC chicks onto a broody hen and she took to them readily, only to have my nasty rooster (who is no more) kill three of them a week or two later. Those frustrating defeats.

And then days like today, when this is the bountiful harvest reaped, reset things a little. Eggs from my chickens, tomatoes and jalapeños from my greenhouse, and succulent wild plums from the road ditch.

Isn’t this a beautiful sight?