Which, for me, is 20 days. After that the summer session starts. Though I work reduced hours until the Fall semester starts. Even more reduced than usual, I mean (I’m always part time) (Yes, I love my life.).
So!
Today: Took two of the girls hiking at Pickle Springs Natural Area — all big rocks and sandy soil, an easy trail. I took Kenya and Dara and let them both go off-lead — Kenya never voluntarily gets more than 15 feet from me regardless of squirrels, and Dara stays almost as close. I’d post pictures but I have to admit I’m not sure how to get the pictures off my phone. Later for that!
Then I came home and started spring cleaning. I figur one hour or one room per day, whichever. No taking books off shelves to dust or anything, though. Way too many books to go that far. Only relatively easy surfaces get dusted.
Then wrote 1800 words. Only 700 words to go to make the 2500 I want to write every single day. Which is roughly 8 pp a day, so if you do a quick bit of math you will see that I would like to write 160 pages or roughly 50,000 words before June 4th. (No promises.)
Then a break to thin peaches. Again. Or more. Whatever. I need a ladder now, all the branches that still need attention are up high. Then picked the cherries and made another cherry cobbler for Dad (neither Mom nor I like cherries) and almond pastries for Mom and me because why should we be deprived and anyway I had leftover almond paste sitting around from another use.
Now it’s seven in the evening and I’ve got the computer out again. 700 words — how hard can that be? Right?
Back to work!
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By mid June in what used to be normal late springs I’d be harvesting my parent’s peaches. Apricots we got around the 4th of July. The last two springs have been unusually cool, AND we had rain while the blossoms were on the trees, so I don’t expect much good fruit this year, and what there is will probably be late.
Funny, I hated all the work with the fruit in the summers as a child, but now I like doing it. Well… not the work of picking it so much, but I don’t mind preserving it. Perhaps fortunately, the original trees started dying off quite some time ago and Mom hasn’t replanted all of them. Less work! I thought they’d reached their natural end of life at ~70 yrs – then I went to Santa Fe, NM and found 400+ year old apricot tree. Guess it liked the New Mexican environment better. Still startles me that an apricot tree would prefer high desert to N. California.
I have a canister&hose style vacuum cleaner that came with a flat brush attachment that I use on bookshelves (and any other shelves I can). Gets the dust reasonably well, is a lot faster than using a dust cloth and I don’t sneeze.
Peaches for us usually start ripening in early July, but I’m not sure this year. It was so hot in March, but then we had a lot of cool weather. To me it looks like they’re quite a long way from ripening, but maybe the fruit will size up in a hurry as the warm summer weather really turns on.
I doubt very much any of my trees will ever reach 70, much less 400. Wow.
I think I need more power suction via the hose attachment. In the meantime, just ignoring the dust on the shelves works for me.
Thread hijack, but did you see this link:
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy/top-10-fantasy-novels-female-authors-inspired-kill/
Congratulations. Hope this brings you a lot of new readers.
Michelle, that’s a great recommendation, and on Kirkus’ site, which is known for not being terribly positive – I hope it bring Rachel a lot of new readers.