Out With The Onions, In With The Turnips

This has been such a busy week for us, transitioning from the summer garden to the fall garden!  And I've loved every minute of it! 

We're right in the middle of the onion harvest; spring onions are dug up and drying in the shed rafters, summer onions are starting to look a bit droopy, fall onions are just beginning to grow.  Mara and I spent an hour together yesterday morning bundling up onions to dry and I enjoyed it so much.  She just watches and learns and questions everything.  We practiced phonics while she cut strings and I bundled.  I'm going to miss her so much when she starts kindergarten in a few weeks.

So anyway, 4 of the 8 onion patches are up, making room for beets and turnips.  I plan to store them in the ground or in our make-shift root cellar, depending on which is ready first: the crops or the cellar.

You want to know the best part of this life?  It's the awareness of what's going on around you.  We've been in this place for 7 years, which is the longest time I've ever spent in one home and over the past couple of years, I've come to notice how dependable life is.  How the dragonflies show up in July and the horseflies in August.  How every fall, the setting sun comes in the dining room window and falls on the rocker glider in the living room.  How every winter, the sun rises over the little pond across the road and, when it's frozen, the light explodes and is nearly blinding in it's beauty.  There are patterns ingrained into every aspect of our lives, though we may not slow down long enough to really see them.   

That's what we're missing in our go-go-go, nomadic, self-involved culture. 

Slowness.  Awareness.  Continuity.