Divide and Conquer - Saturday

Lately our weekends have been functioning on a divide and conquer mantra.  So while Adam cleaned up breakfast and started his to do list in the shop Ivory, Sylvan and I dug out our rain boots and pulled them on.  We're on our way to the Saturday Farmer's Market.  I'm off to get the usual - breakfast sausage from the pork guy, and the seasonal - pears, apples, leeks and Jerusalem artichokes.

Ivory and Sylvan and their babies buckle up in the chariot and I start peddling down town. 

I pass the four loads of laundry I hung up the day before.  

Of course it rained.  

I hung up four loads of laundry.  

After this summer, it is hard to remember that there is weather.  Rain?  It rains?  I touch a few in passing and am surprised.  They feel almost dry in spite of the early morning shower. 

A damp haze hangs over the street, but it is sunny and quiet.  A perfect autumn morning.

We weave our way through the people from market stand to market stand.  Sylvan runs off one way, Ivory the other and I am left wondering which one to go after first, lugging my every growing bag of produce over my shoulder.  But then they find a puddle, and they are both perfectly happy in the tiny radius of what remains from the morning rain.  

While Sylvan napped, Ivory and I dug our hands into the wet earth: pulling up the last of the purple skinned potatoes and the first of our carrots.

photo credit: Adam West

Adam sends me to look at the giant cotton wood log that sits in our yard.  Adam found it in the mill yard and brought it to our last house balancing on a fork lift.  It grows oyster mushrooms.  Tiny mushroom heads are emerging and in a few days these will be fragrant and large, ready to be harvested and eaten.

Ivory helps me rinse the carrots and potatoes.

She proudly documents the harvest, before I take the basket inside to become the night's dinner. 

There are moments  in which I find my children to be incredibly strange: the last few times Ivory and I have gone to the grocery store she has been begging for - no, not candy or chocolate milk, but - a whole chicken. Yes, a whole chicken.  So some of these carrots and potatoes are going to be roasted with that whole chicken I finally picked up for her at the grocery store. 

photo credit: Ivory West

Hours later, after dinner and baths and putting the kids into their beds, I am folding those four loads of laundry as well as the load that was in the dryer.  It is dark outside and there is an unruly pile of boots next to the door.  In spite of all the things we did do today, my mental to do list seems to not have gotten any shorter.  The piles of junk are still on the roof, none of those sewing projects I have lined up have remotely been begun and Sylvan keeps getting out of bed: to read another book, to pee, to poop.  This is when I start to feel like I am failing somewhere.  He finally quits coming down the stairs, but when I come upstairs he is playing with dolls, reading books, banging Ivory's dress-up shoes on the ground. A giant crash sends me running up to find him sprawled on the floor.  He tipped over in his little rocking chair.  Finally it is silent upstairs.  Completely silent.  I set down the clothes I have in my hands to make sure he is okay.  I walk around the corner and see this: 

Two little feet hanging over the edge of the stairs.
I run to the shop: "Adam, you have to come see this."
We both stand there, laughing.
I scoop him up and put him gently into his bed.

Adam goes back to building shelves to hold our many indoor plants and I go back to folding laundry.
Tomorrow, we will have sausage for breakfast, we will make a list and divide and conquer yet another day.