No Man's Land

It's the time of year when I feel like the garden is just about to be put "to bed" for the winter, we are ready to start school, and the temperature is in the 50s at night and up to the 90s during the day...not quite summer, but not quite fall.  I like it.  It's like that Monday morning feeling when you anticipate getting back into the swing of things after those couple of "anything goes" weekend days.  Feels like limbo or No Man's Land but in a good way, a really good time to catch up on things, finish up projects, and get everything as organized as possible before our days are dominated by schoolwork.

It's been crazy here in our little cottage.  Most things good, some things bad.  We have a major issue going on with the farm right now, but everything else feels like those first warm late winter days when you can feel spring coming.  "This too shall pass".  We are all healthy and happy and that's all that matters.

I gave one of our chickens to a friend the other day.  The poor thing had suddenly become shunned and outcast from the rest of the flock and had started to refuse to stay in the coop with the others.  Up onto the hen house she would hop, down over the covered duck run and into the garden.  Her flight feathers had been trimmed and the hen house roof is a good five feet in the air, but she and our Bantam managed to build up their leg muscles enough to squat and flutter up that high.  Eventually she just gave up on going home altogether.  I wonder what she did that was so offensive, to be so ostracized.  We let her be and fed and watered her separately and on the day we gave her away, I found the nest of eggs she had made.  I'd wondered what she had been doing about that.  Finally, I decided that if we were going to get anything more out of what is left of the garden and try to plant cool weather crops again, she would have to go.  Our little Bantam still scratches around, but if I keep them wet she seems to stay out of the the vegetable beds.  Hoping for lots of fresh kale, carrots, brussels sprouts, and potatoes come fall. 

It's Labor Day weekend in a few days.  We will avoid the crowds as usual and stay home camping in our backyard as we do every Labor Day weekend.  It always seems a little silly until we wake up in the morning, unzip the tent, and are met with a view that we would be hard-pressed to find in any of the wooded camp grounds around.  And when our three day family weekend is over so will our time in No Man's Land and we can finish letting summer go and start the next phase of life together.  I can't wait!