Spent some time away from home doing fun stuff ... a long weekend visiting my brother and sister-in-law at their place in SW Virginia ...
Photo of a very happy couple, during a visit to Bear Tree Lake.
... and another long weekend at a greyhound event in Wheeling, West Virginia.
These are nine-month-old pups who really wanted to snuggle.
These yearlings are the same pups that I met last year when they were four-days old.
(Photo with a puppy from last year)
Ruby and Winnie stayed with my parents while we were out of town ... it was their version of a summer vacation.
The cats ... they have been doing what cats do.
Dorothy loves her new cat basket, in the sunshine on the dining room windowsill.
I have been spending most of my early mornings in the garden. The roses are recovering nicely from the annual onslaught of Japanese Beetles. Their season appears to be over and the nasty critters are mostly gone now, thank goodness.
Mine Road Noisette
Indoor time has been spent doing things like canning quart after quart of farmers market tomatoes ...
... and in the basement workshop with projects. This is a door from an antique corner cupboard that I am stripping to repaint. I work on this a little at a time, when schedule permits.
I have mostly been concentrating on being home, decluttering and downsizing, and organizing what's left. The pay off for this effort is a much lighter mental load, and a house that's getting a whole lot tidier.
This is a view of our family room from one morning last week, as seen from the dining room. It's an angle that I don't think I have shown you before.
I have stopped posting to the Hartwood Roses Facebook page, and have switched to Instagram. I'm getting the hang of it, with the hash-tags and stuff, and I find that I like the spontaneity of it. It's fun to instantly share whatever I come across in the garden or am working on at the time, without some logarithm that limits who sees what. Come on over and follow along, if you're inclined.
As you see, life is pretty much the same as it has always been ... I just haven't made time to write blog posts about it. I still have lots of stuff to share, I just need to take the time to do it.