Report cards for brunch

It’s taken longer than I expected to get to this place… the place where I’m ready to share.  June was hard.  Harder than Junes normally are, and I didn’t even have to write “real” report cards.  “Real” report cards make everything hard, even spring, with its flowers and salads and colours and birds and long, long days.  This June eclipsed any report card.  This June ate report cards for brunch – the kind of hungover brunch that happens after a wedding, hours later than you should be eating, with terrible coffee and gross food and screaming children… not a nice brunch.  Not a nice June.

I was really hopeful that July was going to be better.  And don’t get me wrong.  There were parts of July that were awesome.  There are going to be more parts of July that are going to be even more awesome.  There are just other parts of July that are stupid and dumb and that are no better than a shitty June.

BC teachers are still on strike.  Doesn’t look like this is going to change any time soon.  I still don’t have a job.  Doesn’t look like that’s going to change either.  There you go.  June sucked, July sucks, let’s get on with all of those other things.

We had WWOOFERS.  They were awesome.  Jer and I wrote a list, like we often do, but this list was not a normal list.  Almost every single item on this list got crossed off.  That was astonishing.

I drank beer in the shade of a beautiful porch with a great friend.  I had coffee on a sunny patio with another friend.  I’m selling flowers, and we’re selling vegetables, and I’m knitting all of the things.  My gladiolas are blooming, my sunflowers are blooming, my sweet peas are going NUTS (if only you could smell them).  We’re eating garlic and potatoes and zucchini is starting to come out of our ears.  I have brown-eyed susans and broad beans and beets and kohlrabi.  My neighbour has raspberries and she lets me pick them.  Then she lets me eat them.  I’ve given up showering and my feet are filthy (these are both highlights, not lowlights, for all of you “city” folk).  The hammock is up and I had a beer in it this afternoon reading a summer book.  Our baby chickens are getting bigger and we built them a run.  We’ve gone canoeing, and we’ve gone swimming.  I’m going to Hornby tomorrow with friends and Jer and my dog and I’m going to swim in the ocean.  I spend time watching soccer and I only feel small amounts of guilt.  I cracked so many hazelnuts I got a blister.

I think I just wrote all of those things to prove that July really isn’t so bad.  There were just a few bad moments, and they’re hard to forget.  From here on out though, it’s all the good type of brunch.  More pictures soon.

They’re 3 weeks bigger now…

Photo post, as promised

This gallery contains 27 photos.

After yesterday’s somewhat lackluster performance, here’s a batch of pictures from most of July.

Summer lists

Oof!  I’ve been absent lately, but really I haven’t been.  I’ve just been busy.  Summer busy – the best kind.  The laze-about-in-a-hammock, have-5-naps-a-week kind.  But I made a list at the beginning of the summer of a whole bunch of things I wanted to do before summer was up, and I’m doing a really good job of crossing items on the list off, except for blog-writing.

My list:

• Pickathon (I’m leaving on Tuesday, consider it crossed off)
• finish weaving (I’m over 50% done)
• finish sweater (less that 20 grams of yarn left)
• move wardrobe (I’m waiting for the right shelving – this may not get done this summer and that’s ok)
• camping (set for middle of August)
• design shawl
• read 6 books (I’ve read 5 and change)
• make 1 new friend
• spend a day by myself w/ my dog
• make pie squares
• pick strawberries
• pick blueberries
• pick blackberries
• sell 1 bouquet of flowers
• ride my bike to Courtenay
• play first 2 weeks of school
• build raised flower bed
• mulch flowers
• 8 blog posts
• canoe to Hornby

See!  I’m doing pretty well!  Except, of course, for the blog post thing.  This is my second.  And I’m leaving for a week on Tuesday, so August will have to be a blog heavy month.

As you may have deduced by the last item being crossed off, Jer and I bought a canoe.  I told my mom and she promptly asked me if it was a boy or a girl, what colour it was, and whether it had a name.  I was only able to answer 1 of these questions – something that several years ago would have astonished me.  Our canoe is yellow.  She’s lovely and pretty and she goes straight and fast.  Her name is Joan, or Joni.  I wanted to name her brawk, because she’s yeller and a chicken, but Jeremy is much cleverer than I.

The garden is crazy awesome.  The farm made the most money it’s ever made last week, which was really exciting.  I’ve got sunflowers blooming that light up my heart, and one of the Gladiolas that Jer bought for me is in bloom too.  Maybe I’ll grab my camera from the car tomorrow and give you all photos, and then be almost halfway done my goal…Oh.  And the ants came back.  We had another battle between two colonies, but it didn’t last long and they seemed to drink the Borax water solution Jer made up for them.  I had decided not to freak out about it, and this was a good thing.  The ants all seem to be gone.As I said, next week I’m off to Pickathon, a music festival outside of Portland.  I’ll have a day in Portland, where I assume I’ll spend hours in Powell’s Books.  If anyone has a recommendation for something I absolutely HAVE to read, I’d love to hear about it.