a little more light

Ahhhhh.

We made it.
Happy Solstice to you!
~~~

In recent weeks, I have been in what seems like constant - if slow - motion. Each night as I've stumbled through the evening chores in the dark despite my best efforts to be finished before dark, I've thought:

"Tomorrow I really need to rest my bones for a few hours. I will just do the chores, and then relax in the recliner in the parlor for a couple of hours, and rest my back. Meditate.

Ahhhh.

Listen to an audiobook. Possibly do a bit of knitting.

It will be wonderful.

Yes, tomorrow after chores I will just fill the woodbox, stoke the fire, and rest in the recliner. All the aches and kinks can slowly unwind themselves at least a little bit. 

It will be so refreshing.

This is not my woodpile.
It is my friend's woodpile.
I have woodpile envy.

Before I get comfortable, I'll just have to talk with the carpenter about the exterior walls. But before speaking with the carpenter, I have to call the store about the missing handles for the sliding doors, and find someone who knows the whereabouts of the salvage place two towns over. Oh, and the sills! I must call around to see if any of the local sawmills are sawing hardwoods right now.

And pick up another load of insulation 

 and bring it up to the porch.

so the car will be empty and I can pick up a load of hay and use the Hayboggan (seen above) to give each bale a ride to the goat barn. Oh! And when the car is empty again, I must take a couple of hours to drive down to the valley and pick up the goats' minerals which finally came in and which I meant to pick up yesterday and the day before. And I haven't been to the valley for a couple of months, so while I'm there, I need to buy groceries and..."

And that's the way it's gone, every day.

Just one necessary thing after another

and then it's dark again.

Even at my now-slow pace, there have been many small but satisfying accomplishments and lots of very joyful moments. While I was installing the de-icer in the goats' big new water bucket yesterday and thinking about putting a windbreak across the front of a West-facing shelter before we get more snow, I realized something:

LeShodu loves to use this newest platform as a Command Post,
but soon it will just be a nice Snack Bar,
as demonstrated here by Lily and Campion.
Sorry, Shodu.

no matter what isn't done "before winter" this year, I am simply not going to give myself a hard time about it. Because I have been doing my best, pretty continuously, for months, and that's got to be good enough.

But that said, how happy I am to know: there will be a little more light each day now! Soon the shadows won't be quite so long at 2:30 in the afternoon. Soon evening chores won't seem to begin about four hours after morning chores are finished. 

And soon I'll be perusing gorgeous seed catalogs

and making notes for Garden 2015.

Soon!

Good morning.

~~~~~