the long hot summer

It's been 2 1/2 months since I've last posted, in a summer when I fully intended to blog regularly. Sigh. Admittedly, I have been writing in other venues, but I've fallen off keeping this here chronicle up to date. Perhaps the most important event of the summer is the one that would have given me the most time to blog; on July 15, I fell, due to a rubber slipper accident (slippah + puddle o' watah = trouble) and dislocated my knee. A trip to the emergency room later, and I was in an immobilizing brace for 3 weeks, and now am doing 2x weekly physical therapy. I can bend the knee about 80 degrees on a good day, but am working hard to get it back, learning to walk like a normal person again, drive (automatic transmission for the time being) and generally being careful around the house and yard. My job search has been put on hold til I can get through the PT, and figure out driving.

Meanwhile, P moved to DC for his new job. He'll be back the week of Labor Day. So far, we are weathering the long-distance thing okay, though of course I will be thrilled to see him, and feel it's been to long a separation. I will try and visit him once a month, starting in September/October, and it will be nice to visit my old stomping ground of the DC area again, as well.

I am working on the landscaping project in a revised fashion; I had a shed put in and had 7 trees removed from the yard. Next step, to grade and till part of the yard and sow a mixed cover of grass, clover and various shady wildflowers on the flat part of the yard. Then Leslie, my landscaper and I will work on a firepit design, and I'll put in some more perennials later this fall. I'm not really pro-lawn, but our yard has gone from ivy jungle to dirtpatch wasteland in 2 years, and it's time it had something better and prettier; we're suffering from erosion and thorny noxious weeds are getting a beachhead in. I have to move our woodpile over the next few days, and I'm not looking forward to it; seeing as how I know this process is going to reveal far more spiders and snakes than I really want to encounter, and I am phobic of neither.

My mom came in from VA to help around the house during my lamer days, and she'll be here about another week. We've gotten along well, relatively few political/religious arguments and harmony for the most part. I will miss her when she goes home, though I will also certainly rejoice to have my own house back.

There was knitting: Ysolda Teague's Rose Red Beret; a fun, easy knit in luxurious Madeline Tosh Vintage. I also finished the Amelia sweater, spun up a whole bunch of polwarth wool (my treadling leg being the uninjured one) and read 2 more books from the "Song of Ice and Fire" series. I am taking a break from those books now to catch up on my slow trundle through Diana Gabaldon's "Outlander" books.

My sis came to visit at the end of July and helped me to start the beaded cast on for the Hanami Stole. I'm knitting it in some pinkish mauve Misti Alpaca. This will be a pretty shawl, though I'm not sure how much I will actually wear it. I'm envisioning it softening up a chocolate brown or grey dress.

A last pic, taken earlier this summer, before I got my "sporting injury", taken while hiking along the Chattahoochee river: I didn't expect to catch her, she never really stood still.