Amanda wrote several weeks ago that she always feels the shift in the seasons around August 1st. It took me a little longer, but this week, I know what she means. The lake feels colder, the days are clearly shorter, and we are waking up chilly in the morning. Some of the trees in our yard are already dropping leaves.

It seems however that my tomatoes didn’t get the memo. They’re going bonkers, and the full-sized fruits are finally ripening. I took a cup of the yellow cherries over to Barbara today to share the bounty, there are that many. Do tomato plants make you itch? The cherry tomatoes don’t bother me, but if I touch the other plants without gloves, I get rashy.

Haven’t picked a single bell pepper yet, and I’m hoping this little dude will turn yellow as he’s supposed to, and soon. I’d hate to lose it to frost. And despite my early excitement over my celery experiment, the plant hasn’t done diddly squat since. The cucumbers, however, are a success. Swee and I have made several jars of pickles already, and we’re eating the cucumbers as fast as we can pick them.

My big girl and I planted flower seeds all over the yard, and only these marigolds and cosmos came up. I managed to convince her that we should enjoy them in the garden rather than picking them for the house.

We’re still cutting hydrangeas for the table. They’re big and showy, and just so much fun to arrange. I have no idea what these little pink blossoms are. They grow on a vine in the weeds, and just showed up this week. Any ideas?

I’m heading out of town for several days next week, and leaving J semi-alone with the girls overnight for the first time. His dad is coming up to help since J also starts classes next week. I’m not sure if I’ll post while I’m gone – we’ll have to see. Wishing you all a wonderful start to the school year!

We celebrated J’s birthday this weekend with some of his favorite things: steak and asparagus on the grill, plenty of beer and a special bottle of scotch, a new drill and a future appointment with his tattoo artist. His mom and her husband joined us from the Corning area of New York, and we all took the girls to swim in the lake. It was a nice laid back weekend.

My mother-in-law and I had a chance to poke around the two antique shops here in the village with Swee. We started at Barbara’s place at the bottom of the driveway, Lakeside Serendipity. I made sure to snap some pictures during this visit because I love the way she has her items arranged and displayed. I came home with a beautiful blue Pyrex bowl as an advance birthday gift, which was quickly washed and filled with Loaded Ranch Potato Salad for dinner.

There’s another shop at the other end of town called Corner Antiques. She opened a little later in the season, so this was the first time I’d been in. Swee settled herself among the bracelets and loaded her arms up. Daphne, the owner, was very sweet and understanding of my little one – she has a granddaughter almost the same age.

All in all, it was a very pleasant and relaxing weekend. We’ve been trying to squeeze everything we can out of these last few weeks of summer before the weather changes, and before our schedule changes. We have some new and interesting things happening around here that will necessitate a shift in the way we operate. I’ll share more as I can, and am looking forward to being able to write more substantively.

Until then, I’ll be on the glider in the sunshine, enjoying the flowers and the lake with a glass of mama juice in my hand – and sharing photos here.

My glider is back together! This is where we started:

And this is where it is today:

I knew when we pulled it out of the weeds that it would never be pristine, no matter what we did to it. We just don’t have the tools or skills to strip all of the paint down to the metal, and it was pretty badly rusted in some places. But I decided that I wanted to do what we could to make it functional without breaking the bank.

When J took the bench off of the frame for me to clean, I realized there were at least three coats of old paint peeling and crackling among the patches of rust. After hosing it off and letting it dry in the sunshine, I dove in with a wire brush and quickly switched to a small beveled putty knife. The grass was littered with flakes of forest green, mint green and butter yellow when I called it quits.

Neighbor Barbara suggested a Rustoleum product called Rust Reformer to use as a base to stop some of the deterioration. I used a full five cans of that, partially because I wanted to make sure I got a good layer on, and partially because I’m not very skilled with a spray can. This returned the bench and frame to a nice flat black, which actually looked really even. You couldn’t see any of the imperfections. I was tempted to change my plan and keep the whole thing black, but I really wanted to go bright with this.

We chose a new Rustoleum color called Gloss Light Turquoise, and on our first shopping trip, we seriously underestimated the number of cans we’d need, only buying two. After using five whole cans of the black, I went in search of more blue and struck out at three different stores. Barbara came to the rescue again, and picked up two more cans for us. In the interest of not wasting paint this time, I asked J to do the blue. There’s enough left to do the frame, but I kind of like the contrast. I think we’ll live with it like this for a while and see how it goes.

The surface definitely isn’t perfect, which is due both to paint that wouldn’t come up and sections of the metal being terribly pitted from rust and age. It’s possible that a darker color would help hide the texture, and when the time comes to repaint, maybe we’ll try something different. For now though, I think it adds character, and the girls love to use it. Swee and I enjoyed our breakfast and a little “rocka rocka” outside this morning and it’s particularly enjoyable in the evening with a glass of mama juice.

I think she’s pretty.

I spent much of the weekend in awe of the fact that we actually live here. Our time here so far has felt more like an extended vacation in many ways, but for whatever reason, I realized this weekend that this actually is real life. While riding in the car on Saturday, I mentioned to J how I’d noticed a difference in the air and the light here. There’s a clarity to it, when you look out the windows, that is just striking. What is so astounding is the fact I had stopped noticing the haze in Baltimore, and that it had become so commonplace so as to make the change in quality something remarkable. Even with my worsening eyesight, the details I can pick out are incredible. I caught a glimpse of the clouds the other night, and ran across the street to catch the photo above. Amazing.

The girls and I walked part of the Kennebec River Rail Trail on Friday morning. It took some serious “Google fu,” as my husband says, to find the darn place. The website for the trail mentions access points in terms of local landmarks, but does not include street addresses, which does nothing to help a newbie like me. I finally figured out that we could catch the trail at Capitol Park, and my GPS knew how to get there, at least. I’m glad it did; what a beautiful park! It’s clean and well cared for, and we enjoyed the walk through it.

August seems to be the month for flowers here. Everything is in bloom, everywhere we go. Our yard is just teeming with color.

The first coat of color went on the glider yesterday! We used Rustoleum’s Rust Reformer as the base, and I laid it on thick to try and insulate the years of rust that weren’t going anywhere, despite scrubbing and scraping. It took several cans, but it looked pretty good. Unfortunately it was hiding a lot of imperfections that became very apparent with the application of the lighter paint. I knew it wouldn’t be pristine, and I didn’t want it to be, but it’s pretty rough. I suppose we’ll see how it looks after the second coat.

We spent today in the lake. Two months ago, Swee wouldn’t get in the water. Today, she swam out to the first floating dock with her daddy, and again with me. She was so pleased with herself, which made this mama incredibly happy. This happiness, it seems to be a recurring theme here.

My big girl chose all the flowers in this bouquet. We walked the yard together the other night and she told me what to snip. She carried them inside in a big bundle, selected the “big vase,” and then stood on a chair to supervise the arranging of them. And they’re gorgeous. I think they easily rival any professional bouquet.

Hope you’re all having a lovely week.

We are wrapping up a long stretch of veggie refusal by our little one, so I thought I’d share a couple of things that have worked for us recently. Beans is a tank, and eats pretty much anything put in front of her, but Swee has always been a different story. She’s always been a wee one, and around 18 months old, began to refuse certain foods. For a while, we just rolled with it. We’d offer lots of different things but she got so stubborn and we were wasting so much food, that for a while I resigned myself to cooking things she would eat with the knowledge that she would leave the veggies and protein on her plate. Thankfully, we seem to be turning a corner.

Last night we had burgers on the grill with beef instead of turkey, which we don’t do very often. It was my aunt’s suggestion to mix veggies into the hamburger meat. I chopped up some zucchini and some kale from the garden and cooked them in olive oil the night before, and then mixed it into the ground beef with some diced red onion, an egg and a splash of Worcestershire. We were in the mood for cheese so they got topped with some Cooper Sharp, but none of us really care for buns so we did without. Beansie and Swee housed theirs, and J asked if we could have them this way again, so I’m calling it a win.

Since our family has been back under one roof, I’ve been preparing a fruit and veggie plate to set on the table within her reach. She knows that she can help herself to anything on that plate, and as much of it as she wants as long as she eats the majority of her main course. And it’s working! She seems genuinely excited to see the plate arrive on the table and I see her pudgy little hand reach out more often than not. I generally include whatever I have in the fridge. Last night was baby carrots, sliced cucumbers and strawberries with a little bowl of homemade dippy – just sour cream with garlic powder and dill weed. I’ll often cut up red or orange bell peppers, and sometimes there are other fruits. When we had all those black raspberries, they made an appearance just about every night. The plate is almost always empty at the end of the meal.

Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this tactic, but we have employed a bit of bribery to get Swee to eat her dinner. We will sometimes have a treat on hand to offer if the going is particularly rough. There was no need to bribe her last night, but we enjoyed popsicles just the same. These molds are as old as I am, almost. I remember my mom using them when my brothers and I were little, and my girls love them now. I use my stick blender to puree some fruit, fresh or frozen, and add a splash of juice to help it freeze smoothly. I’ve found that freezing straight fruit puree results in mealy popsicles, but the addition of some liquid smooths it out while taking the tart edge off. This time I used watermelon and frozen cherries, with a little Juicey Juice. They stain like crazy, so it has to be warm enough for naked babies to enjoy them, and then rinse off in the pool or bathtub.

We went on an adventure today.

Everyone was fed and in the truck early. We had an easy drive down. J got in free as a veteran, and we found a great parking spot. The beach was spotless and the tent went up without a hitch. Beansie napped to the sound of the waves and Swee got buried. No one got sunburned, and both girls slept the whole ride home.

A perfect day.