Late Summer Excesses

According to Chinese medicine, my dominant elements are Earth and Water. (Okay, you can stop reading now and skip to the pictures if you find yourself snickering at that first sentence. But, I'll just tell you that principles and treatments from Chinese medicine and ayurveda have changed my quality of life dramatically.)

Aaaaanyway, late summer is associated with Earth, and for me, that manifests as having a ton of energy and a desire to reap the benefits of the harvest, put up a ton of food, and organize, organize. Lucky for me, I'm a full-time educator and a part-time student, which benefit from this high-energy state. Not so lucky, I tend to overdo it, have difficulty sleeping, and find it hard to relax.

This past week was the first week of school for me at graduate school, my place of work, and DD. So, that means my time was spent: admitting, testing, advising, and registering community college students; buying school supplies, including going to 3 different big box stores to find the right color of binder as prescribed by the teacher (okay, we never found one and I said "make do!"); and getting myself geared back up for lots o' reading and writing.

But, there are benefits from all this energy...these

became these.

(There's actually about 5 times that much, but it's in a dark closet.) T. and I picked 34 pounds of peaches and 12 pounds of plums, and I turned them into spiced plums, plum jam, plum butter, peach butter, peach jam, peach preserves, dried peaches, and peach cobbler.

And the piles, bags, shelves, hidden-under-the-bed with god knows what else stashes of yarn (no pictures...I have some dignity)...became neatly organized into this:

And today, tomato and pepper excesses turned into the winter's salsa...

I did take some time, though, to enjoy the view from the hammock.