Excuses Excuses Excuses

I am about to offer an excuse so excuse me! I am extremely busy as of late. I am working full time for the National Park Service, going to school full time, and I have no maid service or professional chef. I have not been visiting other blogs as I should be, and my comments are spotty at best. I read a blog post once that was not authored by the owner of the blog, but by her baby sister. The baby sister confessed to everyone that her older sister had offered to pay her to keep up her blog pretending to be her. I laughed so hard, but for one brief moment the other day I thought if I had a willing sister I would be considering it right now (the ones I have would charge more because they are ultra intelligent). It has been a great challenge and great fun to try to keep up with this schedule, and I have the greatest support system in the world to be able to do this. I am very grateful for my romantic, imaginative, and sweet husband. I came home the other day to a handwritten poem, dinner, and a clean house. I have to say that I am pretty lucky. I am hoping we survive this crazy year, and that nothing but good will come from the current choices we are making. In the meantime, please forgive my sloppy and inconsistent comments and know that I do care about what all of you are doing and thinking, I just am running full steam half the time, and find it hard to slow down.

To Autumn-John Keats

John Keats (1795-1821)




SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.



Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.



Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.