Today

Tuesdays might become the new Harry Potter post day, at this rate. The garden is too busy to allow me weekend time for writing long Monday posts. At the moment, we're also waiting on Christie, who hasn't been around either of her blogs all week, which suggests busyness in the extreme. So, once again:

The Today meme is hosted by Masha! Join in over at Piękno, or leave your own sensory notes in the combox...

Today I am...

Feeling... cheerful. It's been a productive day. I've spent most of it cutting, juicing, and canning apples with my mom. Nine canned quarts and several frozen pints of juice later, I'm kind of tired, and I still mean to make and can a big pot of applesauce tonight. It's tempting to respond to every last one of these sensory questions with "apple," but I don't suppose I need to be that lazy. Half of them are going to be apple-related, though. There's just nothing I can do about it.

Seeing... so many bags of apples. I think we picked twelve or thirteen, and there's still a lot of tree we haven't managed to reach.

Smelling... in the laundry room, bruised and overripe Transparent windfalls, drying oregano, and garlic. It's not a good combination. But the rest of the house smells like baking zucchini bread with molasses and honey instead of sugar.

Tasting... frothy, fresh-pressed apple juice.

Listening... to a lot of roaring—Mom's industrial-strength juicer and her old wheat grinder. As Beth remarked, it's funny that the latter was branded "WhisperMill". It shrieks. At the top of its little fraction-of-a-horsepower lungs.

Grateful... for a mom who likes helping me put up the abundance, and has the wherewithal to do it. She sent me home with the juicer so I can keep going.

Reading... The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart. I Googled her after reading Airs Above the Ground and discovered that for all she's considered the foundress of the romantic suspense story, she's perhaps best known for writing fantasy. There's nothing I love better than a good fantasy with loads of worldbuilding, so the first of the Merlin books went straight onto my library request list.

Loving... my new haircut. I got down to Mom's today and told her I'd hit the twice-yearly point where I couldn't handle my hair anymore. She cut it to just below my shoulders and feathered it a little, and it weighs so much less and feels so light and comfortable.

Hoping... for a safe, sane August. Our fifth anniversary is this Saturday; huckleberry picking is just two weeks out; Lou's sister is flying in from the East Coast for the last week of the month, and I've finally bought tickets to Tampa for a few days at the end of that week and the start of September to see my grandparents, whom I haven't seen in four years and who very much want and deserve a visit. I think I'm going to get to meet Christie, too!!! if only for a trip to a coffee shop or the beach or something. (Masha, if you think there's half the slightest chance you can get to Tampa in a month for a couple of hours picking up shells with me and Christie on the Gulf of Mexico, LET ME KNOW.)