Friday Cozies – Week 31 of 2020

One of my goals for 2020 was to take more pictures of our everyday life and use them here in my blog. To keep myself accountable, I try to share as many as I can on Fridays. It’s messy over here, folks! But I have baking, beautiful flowers, and more berries to share today.

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Here’s a typical morning lately: I wake up early and do all of my quiet time stuff. The kids start waking up and I help them get dressed and fed. I’ve been relying on the PBS Kids channel a lot this week because it’s so hot and the TV keeps them in the room with the air conditioner. After Bug gets on the bus, we head outside. Bear runs around like a madman and takes laps around the house. Birdie and I check on the bunnies and replenish their water and food. Then we let the chickens out of their coops and give them plenty of fresh water. And the best part of the morning: we take the measuring cup out to the blackberry bushes and pick, pick, pick. We’re finally getting more than a handful at a time, so it’s been fun to measure out our bounty each morning. Matt usually joins us in the middle of our picking, after waking up from working the night before. Then we check on the garden, weed, pick, and make a plan for watering. When we “finish” with the garden (the garden is never finished), we head back inside, roll out the art cart, and draw and paint. My art time is spent finishing up my July Phenology Wheel and getting August’s wheel set up and ready to be filled. I hope to share my finished Phenology Wheel with you all next week! I started doing these in February and am kicking myself for falling off the wagon during the quarantine.

It has been hot. But on Wednesday, there was serendipity. The humidity dropped for a bit and we collected two cups of blackberries – cobbler time! I followed The Pioneer Woman’s Blackberry Cobbler recipe. It’s a bit more cakey than I’m used to, but still quite delicious. Be sure you have ice cream for it because it’s not very sweet on its own! I cooked it in my cast iron skillet and the edges got perfectly crisp… no soggy bottoms around here!

About half of our tomatoes have been decimated by tomato hornworms. We have several bushes of heirloom brandywine tomatoes that aren’t going to survive much longer! But all of our hybrid tomato bushes seem to be doing fine and are really healthy. This happened last year too, but we didn’t realize the culprits were those ugly old hornworms. Now we know and will be prepared for battle next year! (We’ve been feeding the worms to the chickens. Don’t judge us!)

Summer is winding down – the days are getting shorter, the sun is shifting in the sky, and the hens are starting to lay fewer eggs. I’ve reached the point in the season when I’m regretting that I didn’t do more in the garden. Why didn’t I weed more? Why didn’t I plant more? Why didn’t I water more? And of course, the planning for next year’s garden has already begun. Digging around in the garden has me thinking about Jayber Crow a lot, and even though I read it in October 2019, I’m already thinking about a reread. I think I’ll try to read a couple more books in the Port William series first, but man! How can anything beat Jayber Crow?

I watched most of John Lewis’ funeral yesterday. It was amazing – the speakers were incredible and had the best stories to share. How can one person do so much in a lifetime? Barack Obama was fantastic, but my favorite speaker was Jamila Thompson. She’s his Deputy Chief of Staff and she shared what it was like to work for Lewis. It was beautiful and funny! Her choice of words were perfect – it was like poetry. Make it sing was something that Lewis demanded from his staff, and she did that yesterday. I’m thankful that she spoke because I felt like she gave a perspective that I didn’t often hear about. I was going to order the March Trilogy for my kiddos, but it’s sold out right now. I’ll probably end up ordering it anyway and just be surprised when it arrives! And I know one thing – I cannot wait to vote this November!

There is so much to learn. There is so much to do. It’s exciting!

I hope to be back with another post this weekend. I’ve been working on a curriculum post for several weeks and hope to finally publish it this weekend! And of course, today is the last day of July so I’ll be publishing a July highlights post early next week (I hope!). Please know that my early morning hours will be full of feverish typing for the next few days to get these things finished!

But just in case things don’t work out as planned, I hope you all have a fantastic weekend. Please stay safe, please stay cool, and I hope you find ways to enjoy good books and beautiful wool.