We stayed home from market last weekend and had a rainy weekend at home. Days of rain were just what the earth needed during our dry season, and we were grateful for it. We had orders to catch up on and lots of re-stocking to do, but first there needed to be some major cleaning around here, so we could get all that work done. Jeff set to work cleaning his workshops and I set to work cleaning the pantry. Cleaning the pantry was a big job, but between the two it was much easier because it was a single room, (he has a lot of different spaces he works in.) The pantry is the room where lots of things have gotten thrown over the years when we didn’t have room for that item in the rest of the house or we needed to quickly get the mess out of our way. As you can imagine, that piles up and gets quite chaotic.

That pantry was so overdue for a good cleaning! Last year for my birthday (September) when Jeff asked me what I wanted to do for it, I told him I wanted to spend the day cleaning out the pantry. But we were busy getting ready for a festival, so we were going to postpone it until after the festival, but then there was so much catching up to do before our next festival and well, you know how it goes. Sometimes I wonder how things can get so messy around here when it feels like I’m constantly tidying up and cleaning, but the big organizational projects get put off because it seems we’re always getting ready for a festival or a market, or catching up on custom orders, and then there is some more planting to do in the garden, and then we can hardly catch our breathe before the next festival or market day comes. Our life is just full and busy, so it’s easy for the big cleaning projects to get put on hold, but it feels so good when we get some of them done!

Bracken helped me clear the bottom shelves and move everything off the floor. He loves mopping and genuinely thanks me every time I invite him to mop the floors with me. I actually get a kick out of how much he enjoys it, and all the mopping enthusiasm he has. The floors in the pantry are quite ugly to be honest (old linoleum, awful pattern) and they were still ugly after I mopped them, but I felt good because I knew they were clean! Then I set to work cleaning off one shelf at a time and then organizing things back on the shelves. Years ago Jeff and I built wooden shelves in our pantry together, with local wood one of our neighbors milled. Right now those shelves are filled with empty mason jars, but I wanted to get the pantry cleaned up this year to get ready for filling those jars up and to get the shelves filled with food like they are meant to be.

To get things cleaner around here, it got a whole lot more chaotic in the meantime as I pulled so many things out from the pantry and they were scattered around the rest of the house. That’s how it goes: bigger messes while you work to get things cleaner. My dad and stepmom were coming over on Sunday, and there was quite a bit to finish up to get the house ready again before their arrival. (The pantry is mostly finished now (Yay! That felt so good to accomplish!), I only have a few more shelves to clear off, a little more organizing to do, and some loose ends to finish up.) We scrambled to get the house somewhat back together before they got here. They’ve been doing some major organizational projects of their own, so they could relate.

On Sunday we did our annual tradition of blueberry picking. Bracken enjoys going blueberry picking with his grandparents every summer. It was pouring that whole morning, but thankfully the skies cleared so we could pick berries that afternoon. It was the only weekend that would work for them to visit, so we figured we could put on rain gear, but it was quite appreciated to have a break from the rain. We went to a farm down the road from our house, a familiar one we’ve been to time and again for many summers. It’s not all that far, but with the curvy mountain roads it takes about 20-30 minutes to get there. We didn’t plan on picking for that long, but once you get out in those blueberry bushes, each berry pulls you in and it’s hard to walk by one without picking it. I thought being older this year, Bracken would have a little more self control, but the farmer told him he didn’t mind if he ate berries out in the field and Bracken probably ate his weight in them. What can I say? It’s his annual “blueberry cleanse.” And it’s tradition.

P.S. See the bird in the tree with outstretched wings? This picture was taken from our living room window. Sunday morning Bracken spotted a turkey vulture in a tree and as we watched it, it stretched it’s wings out. We’ve seen them do that before in the sun, but I was surprised to see one do that in the rain! It stayed in the same spot for hours and the cool thing is that it was still there for my dad and stepmom to see when they arrived. Not only that, but it stretched it’s wings out another time while they were there so they could see it too. I could see why the birds would do that in the warm sun, but I wondered aloud why they would do that in the rain. Of course Jeff and my dad (get those two together and the jokes start flying) were cracking jokes about the bird having stinky armpits so it was washing them off…