Vacation All I Ever Wanted

Day two of my mostly stay at home vacation. It hasn't been quite what I expected, as work invaded about 4 hours of my first vacation day, and my daughter stayed home sick from tennis and day camp. Today she had a "recovery day," so my plans of having a couple days to myself to decompress and transition into full vacation mode were thwarted. But today we made the best of it. Instead of a road run with my dog, we headed to the track so the girls could roam safely while I ran my 3 miles. I even did a little speed work, inspired by the monotony of the oval. Then home for a little time in the garden while my girls did some "creative reapportionment" of saplings in the woods behind my house, which will soon be flattened from a steep, forested hillside into a girls' softball field for the local high school. (Grrrr) They even rolled a nice sized stone that I had admired down the hill for me. Way to go, girls!

Next, I regrettably gave into an impulse to cut my own hair. It's not terrible - no one in my family even noticed - but it's not quite...right. Oh well. Then on to bread baking with a nap squeezed in between first and second rise. A risky move, but it paid off with my best bread yet.

The highlight of the day has been watching the river by our house rise, and rise, and flirt with the top of the bank, making me wonder if I should evacuate my five barred rock hens from their new chicken coop. This is the highest the river in the four years we've lived here - a good 9 feet above its standard summer depth of about a foot. It is something to see, with entire trees raging by, and our own trees along the bank cracking ominously. We watched a Merganser mama and her 6 ducklings navigate the swollen waters with amazing skill - flapping madly and skimming the surface when they crossed the racing current, but otherwise tracing the shoreline, making improbably quick progress upstream.

Mama Merganser plans her approach...Then shows the youngsters how to do it!

One of our less favored fauna, a woodchuck, found himself flooded out of his den, so in spite of the presence of a bunch of humans, he had no choice but to come out and join us on the river bank. He announced his displeasure with a series of chatters, but we soon made our peace.

The river began to recede while we ate dinner. I finally had enough food for my regular foursome plus my strapping young adult stepson and his buddy. It's taken me almost 2 weeks to adjust my shopping and cooking to accommodate those adolescent appetites! But I made it up to them with steak, corn on the cob, pasta salad with fresh mozzarella, veggies from our CSA basket, and herbs from my little garden. And of course the fresh homemade bread. Yum.