Indeed, I did forget something important on my list of manna from heaven yesterday. Gord brought two brand spanking new mountain bikes to the farm for us. Judging by their tires, they had never been ridden. It is hard to imagine why anyone would be discarding them, but someone had; fortunately for us. They are ducky on these gravel roads.

~ wild raspberry bushes all around our yard ~

I rode a six-mile rectangle yesterday afternoon after the bus dropped the boys off from school at 4 o’clock. It was a glorious ride until I got tuckered about five miles into it, after a strong wind came up and I couldn’t get the gears to change to make pedalling easier. I am so inept at things like that; lately I discovered that machines don’t cooperate because I don’t press and hold their buttons hard and long enough! Such a simple reason, and all this time I’ve thought I had a mechanical handicap. I guess I have, but it’s not difficult to change. Just gotta be less gentle, more forceful.

On the home stretch I noticed a hunk of porcupine tail on the road and figured someone must have run over one. Not much further on I noticed the dog, who had been running beside me most of the way, was not on the road. I had to call her about three times before she came dashing out of the ditch. When she finally got close I saw that she had porcupine quills stuck in her face and back. So when we got back to the yard I snipped off their ends with a pair of scissors, and pulled each one out with pliers. Sara was no worse for wear, but little Zander boy (Grade 2), who was playing outside with Everett, was quite excited. He carefully collected all the quill pieces to take to school for Show ‘n’ Tell today.

~ from atop the "touchstones", a slightly
raised vantage point on my shorter walks ~

Any day now, everything should be turning from green to gold. My little backlog of photographs will be outdated. So I'm sticking them in this morning, before it's too late.

Here's Everett, my littlest sweetie, doing his two-dollar job -- which he did only once in all of August.

He's so peculiar. He likes to wear plaid, flannel shirts and buttons them up as high as they will go, usually. Even on sweltering 90-degree days, I have to push him hard to go change into a T-shirt.

Right around the time of Hurricane Katrina (named after me, obviously), we had a strange storm here. The sky was an unworldly colour, and within one week we got six inches of rain, which is probably more than our area got all summer.

Now the fields are wet and the harvest is delayed, while we have had frost warnings some nights. Have only covered the tomatoes two times so far, and there are still strawberries ripening in the garden. And the flowers around the house and in the yard are only now looking as impressive as they should have all summer.