Loving the Summer Lull

Breathe…breathe…breathe. This lovely post-Mexico summer life lazes on. We’re in the magic, brief lull between the end of summer teaching and the pre-fall semester rush, when we try to cram in enough travel, sun, friends, family and music to keep us warm through the cold to come.

Here on the Row, Francoise, Ramon, and Junior (our three adult male peacocks) are dropping train feathers, which will last another week or two. We go on daily feather-collecting walks. The hens gather at the birdbath for coffee, rolling their eyes at the boys, who still prance vainly about with scraggly gapped trains that look like silly grins with missing teeth. Two of the three nesting hens have chicks, three each. Wanda has already abandoned caution to sun with her brood on the back porch in the morning. I’m thinking we’ll need a government loan—let’s call it a P-ail out—to keep the peaflock in corn all winter.

It’s been an unusually wet summer. The dog pond is full, the frogs sing a groovy guttural chorus at night, flowers that should be long gone by now are still blooming, and the acreage needs mowing about every 24 hours. It’s a wild plum year, but the plums are late ripening due to the cool, wet weather. I’m getting antsy for jam day—three or four women in an all-day marathon jam production line, Little Feat blasting from all six speakers while we laugh hysterically, gossip, drink wine, and fling fire & molten jam in a rush to get jars sealed. Who says we don’t live dangerously in South Dakota?

I finally got the garden weeded and found my basil, doing well in spite of me. I also found parsley, rosemary, thyme, curry and dill that I forgot I’d planted. We had a bumper crop of asparagus, we’ve eaten the first of the cucumbers, and we’re waiting on the tomatoes and hot peppers. The gooseberries are ready to pick (gooseberry pie!), and we put in black raspberry and blueberry bushes this year. We’ll plant grape vines next spring along the old cow fence. How about Peacock Panacea for a new South Dakota red wine?

Happily, the void that would otherwise be my post-vacation funk is filled with friends & music this summer. Friday we went downtown to hear our favorite Happy Hour trio at our favorite Little Town bar, then on to the Beagles’ Club to hear Ray’s band suffer through a wedding reception dollar dance ad infinitum. My friends Gardenia and Lulu and I got to be the chick backup singers, always an amazing gift for me.

Saturday night Ray and the band played an outdoor gig for the Gayville, South Dakota Hay Days. Meanwhile, Mathilda, Gardenia and I were swooning like weak-kneed schoolgirls for Keb Mo at JazzFest, a free outdoor 2-day concert series in Sioux Falls. I probably made a fool of myself ogling and crowding in on the stage, but that wasn’t me who shot the granny panties at Keb, I swear.

Yesterday, Ray and I painted the kitchen. We wanted to get it done before this weekend’s flurry of company & activity. The quasi-monthly Sisters of Perpetual Disorder dinner is here at the Row this weekend, my Kansas brother & family are blowing through on their way to the family reunion in MN, and my oldest son & family are coming from Washington to visit and wax nostalgic in Little Town for a week or so.

Ray has to play again tonight in Sioux Falls, so while the house is quiet, I’ll sew new curtains for the kitchen cupboards (remember old farm kitchens with cupboard curtains? We have some with doors, some with curtains) to match the new color. I got batik fabric that’s all the colors of the Caribbean, and glass bead trim to sew along the bottom. I guess I STILL have Mexico on the brain, so our kitchen will be an eclectic, hippie-esque, Yuca-Prairie blend. Designed to Sell (or any HG network show) would be mortified, but I know it will be a constant reminder, especially when we're under Jack Blizzard’s thumb in December, of the sweet, drifty, dreamy summer.