Cuspin' It Up

I don't know about you, but for weeks it's felt like I'm balancing on a cobweb thin line, teetering and slipping, one foot landing on this side, the other foot landing on that side....back & forth, over & under. Everything feels like it's living on the cusp, not quite here or there, then or now. Some of it is the seasonal seesaw; in one morning we picked Concord grapes to make jam

and bought a half bushel of San Marzano tomatoes to make batches of pomodoro sauce to freeze, a culinary preservation of two seasons in one day.

It's a strange time of year, one day crazy hot (a week ago we had a heat index of 104), two days later we're longing for a fire in the pellet stove. The hummingbirds are more prolific than they were all Summer, and the chickens are calling it a day before 7:00. I'm antsy for Fall to begin, but those cuspy weeks between late August and the first day of Autumn are my busiest, most stressful at work, leaving me too exhausted to enjoy the aforementioned chilly evenings. I was at work before the sun was fully up, and arrived home after it had settled in for the night. Incidentally, that's why I've been absent from the Land of Bloggers; I've been thinking of so many of you but have scarcely been on the computer for anything but work in weeks. This evening I finally had time to start meandering through your worlds again, trying to catch up with all I had missed.

The purple asters and goldenrod have created a symphony of color, the opening act for the foliage fireworks to come, but some tree disease has pre-empted the maples' show; all over our part of the Hudson Valley the maples are spotted and wilting, leaves falling with every breeze, not with the grace of final bows but with a dread finality of lingering illness. 

I'm grateful to be returning to hearth and home at a more reasonable time, to reacquaint myself with the menagerie (Linda is currently fostering two litters, several weeks apart in age), but antsy to make our escape to Cape Cod in 4 weeks. This past weekend we wandered to a neighboring county and began daydreaming of a life spent waking up to this view:

I'm restless, yet tired, longing to be out in the crisp days and curled up near the fire with wool and tea. There's work to be done, garlic, kale, snakeroot & a spice bush to plant, soups to cook and freeze, apple & pumpkin butter to be made and preserved, but I'm aching for the hibernation of the seasons to come, wanting to just sit somewhere and allow body, soul and mind to knit themselves together again.

I want it all, kids....and I'm not even sure what all is.  Are any of you feeling this same betwixt and between tug these days?