Putting Things to Rest and Celebrating

I absolutely love this time of year.
As I was growing up my mother would always lament the end of summer and how dreary everything would become as autumn would begin.
I have never seen it that way though. There are so many new beginnings! Maybe it's because school begins in September and that always felt like the marker of the new year. My birthday was last weekend, so as an adult, that always feels a little like new years too. And even though I'm not Jewish, Rosh Hashanah just started yesterday.
It doesn't feel like the end of anything, instead it feels like now is the time to put down roots for new ideas and beginnings. We just bought 3# of rye seed to plant in the gardens for a cover crop. Typically we just mulch a ton of leaves on the gardens, but this year we've decided to do a cover crop in an attempt to pump up the garden. The one garden where the potatoes were this year has been used every year for the past 11 years. It's likely sort of tired despite chicken poo and on-and-off composting. I need to clean up/harvest stuff in the middle garden so that I can plant the rye there as well.
This past spring I won an auction "service" at the kid's school for S's teacher (who is a super cool guy, a great teacher, father to twin two year olds (!) and a Master Gardener) to come to our place and "assess" our gardens. We never got it together to have him visit this spring, so he brought his family over this past Sunday. Part of his consultation was collecting a big soil sample from all over the gardens to send away to Amherst, MA to be tested. He was the one to encourage us planting a cover crop. It'll be interesting to see what the soil results are like. I'm praying low to no lead since I've never tested it and this is a 160 year old property. Ay yi yi.
We also bought a couple of pounds of seed garlic yesterday. That makes for two hard neck varieties (one batch taken from some of what I harvested this summer) and one soft neck variety. If I weren't so lazy, I'd pop up and look at the varieties. I'll need to get that into the ground soon too.

G's days off have been switched from normal weekends to Thursday and Friday off. This was his first week on the new schedule and he got called in both days. Sigh. While it's good financially to have some over time, I always miss him when I plan on having him home with me. However, it's really the first time in 3 years that the opportunity for over time has been an option. We made up for it by going on a "date" sans children to the garden store while also grabbing a quick cup of coffee! It's the little things. I'm also so very thankful for a sweet grandma upstairs who said Yes when asked last minute if she'd watch said children.

Tomorrow marks M's second birthday!! So exciting!
And because I'm such a poor planner, other parties were put in front of hers! And by this I mean that both our older kids were invited to very-hard-to-turn-down parties tomorrow and my mother is going to a 50th wedding anniversary party for her brother. So we're having a little party for M on Sunday (even though her Daddy will be working). I'm planning on making my favorite challah recipe (New Years!), a big pot of soup, and having a LOT of apples around.