The scent of four o’clocks is wafting in from the jungle outside my window. Katydids are in full voice, and so is one lone screech owl, sounding terribly mournful.

I worked with DH today, painting a kitchen, and my neck and shoulder are very sore and achy. We got a lot done, though. I should remember to take Arnica before I go to bed.

When we got home this evening, DH worked on sanding the top of my dresser that I started stripping last week. It has turned out to be poplar, and it’s gorgeous. I have a first coat of oil on it, and will sand it in the morning and give it a second coat. Unfortunately, the rest of the dresser has an extremely tenacious coat of paint, and I think we’re just going to paint it. Which will be nice, I think—painted white, and with an oiled poplar top. I’d like to find some old drawer pulls to replace the ones that are on it.

I made a small pot of oyster stew for supper; not surprisingly, all I could find were oysters from Virginia—the Apalachicola bay, I’m guessing, is still closed to oystering, and probably will be for a while. Oysters from Virginia—it just wasn’t the same.

Cool and rainy today–what a relief! My morning walk was through a classic Appalachian mountain mist; my hair was wet when I came in, but I was still nice and cool, even after a brisk three miles.

It looks like DH and I, after some necessary errands and running around, might actually have a date tonight! I think we may try to go see The Wedding Crashers, and then, if there’s time, go have dinner at the Stoney Knob Cafe. If there’s not time, we may just grab something and sneak it into the theater. Which we like to do anyway.

On our list of errands is the wine and beer-making supply for corks for bottling our Honeysuckle Rose Mead, and a new five gallon glass carboy for putting our new batch of blackberry wine into (we started this batch last weekend with a bunch of the D*’s fat and fabulous blackberries).

I hope all the rest of you are cooling off!

It has been suggested, by more than one member of my family, that a dip in the “pool” might do wonders for my mood (which I thought was fine, but evidently not). The pool is a fairly huge livestock watering trough that DH refills with cold clean spring water every couple of days, and in which Bernard lives (she’s sort of the aquatic exhibit here on the farm). So I’m trying to decide which is the most productive thing for me to be doing right now: wishing really, really hard for a good storm, or going out and floating in the trough.

The animals are all very low-key this time of year. I don’t know the last time I saw the cows (the girls see them on their many hours spent wandering the mountain) and I hear the horses outside the bedroom window at night, but that’s it. The goats loll about in the sun (!), but are generally too languid to go looking for trouble (I’m counting my blessings). We’re only getting a couple of eggs a day—the chickens are hot and molting, but since it’s a little early for them to be molting, I’m hoping for plenty of eggs this fall, which is when they usually molt.

OK, I give up on the storm; I’m off for a swim.

The heat may finally have been too much today. As it neared 100° we all became limper and limper, until we all bordered on hopelessly useless. We had dinner with friends tonight, and we all wore a sheen of sweat as we ate.

When we got home at 10:30 it was still 75 humid degrees, and we ate bowls of frozen blackberries drizzled with cream to cool off. That helped some, but I think I’m off to shower before I finally crawl into my lovely cool, smooth white sheets.

I don’t know what’s up with my computer, but I haven’t been able to do anything on it for the last week or so. Very annoying….

The main news here is the heat. There is some! It’s been hot as the devil, and humid, to boot. I’m actually kind of loving it, as long as I don’t have to do much; Saturday we went and walked some land that was all beautiful, open, rolling fields, and it was about 95°, and 95% humidity, and I thought we were going to pass out! Especially Bernard, who doesn’t handle heat very well. I keep homeopathic belladonna in my bag for her during hot weather. You can always tell when she needs it: her face gets terribly flushed and her pupils get dilated, and often she gets a headache.

Saturday we also had lunch with my grandmother (who hates to be introduced as my grandmother—I’m not sure what she wants—Hi, this is my older sister. Much older!—or—Hello, this is some lady I found on the street.?) and her husband of the last few years. Who, as long time readers may remember, was the doctor that caught me when I was born. He’s an absolute sweetheart—funny, kind, adventuresome, playful. Meemaw, on the other hand…I just don’t know, sometimes.

The cicadas have started their strange and lovely sound, that heralds the impending end of summer. It makes me a little sad, but in a good way; maybe melancholy is a better word. Summer here is just long enough that you’re glad when it’s over and fall can begin. Winter, too; I think this is the perfect climate. And fall is glorious and long. And starts August 1st; more on that later.

It’s nice to be back!

There is a certain sameness to the days now; DH goes off to work, the girls and I settle into the heat and routine of being home. In some ways I miss having a job—when I’m working I appreciate my time at home more. As it is now, I feel useless and bored and stressed. I am a joy to live with right now!

And have I mentioned that I have the worst case of pms ever? Holy cow! Could this be the start of menopause? If so, we’re all in trouble! And here I was just bragging about how great it was turning 40!

A funny thing, when I don’t feel well, is that I never think of the things that I would tell someone else to do. So I’ve been moping around in misery, finally thinking to pick up Susun Weed’s book, in which she suggested Motherwort for all the symptoms I’ve been dealing with: depression, anxiety, rage, bloating, sore breasts, etc. After a couple of hefty doses (20-ish drops each) of dark green, extremely bitter tincture, made from plants growing here at the farm, I felt the knot around my heart loosen, and I had a couple of huge, involuntary sighs, and have felt much better ever since. To the enormous relief of DH and the girls.

Motherwort is probably my favorite herb: bitter and cooling and soothing, and a gentle heart tonic. It grows as a weed here, though there was none growing when we moved here 6 years ago—I planted one plant, and it’s everywhere now. It’s in the mint family. One flowering plant makes a huge amount of tincture, which is the only way I can bear to take it; as a tea it would be far too bitter to drink. Though I sometimes crave the bitterness of the tincture in a glass of water.

The other remedy I’m using right now is Traditional Medicinal’s PMS Tea, which contains dandelion, oatstraw, and nettles, among other herbs. A quart of that on ice every day—between that and the Motherwort I’m a new person! Well, not quite, but much, much better.

…it’s the humidity. I actually had somebody say that, without irony, to me today! It’s true, though. A* came up for a visit today, and we just sort of draped our wilted selves around the house; it’s hard to find the motivation for much else.

The air stays hazy—the ridge across the way is either misty or blue, depending upon the hour of the day. Odors are particularly prominent right now, for better or worse. I like the flower smells—whatever it is that smells like jasmine halfway down the driveway when I walk; the glassfull of milkweed flowers that DH put on my bedside table—but I’m not loving the compost, or the always smelly trash, or the general air of mold and decay that seems to pervade everything.

DH can’t drink enough water at work, and nobody wants to eat until after dark.

It’s been 90°-ish during the day, and 70 at night, which is pretty hot for us. We even had to take the down comforter off the bed!

DH and the girls have gone to Hot Springs, giving me a rare evening home alone. It’s kind of lovely, but maybe a little lonely. Just a little.

Someone with a projector is showing Star Wars, using the white cinderblock wall of the post office as a screen. Isn’t that a fun idea? Too bad I’ve recently become a hermit, and can’t stand the thought of being around that many people! I don’t know what is the matter with me—this is a little unusual. Oh well—I guess I’ll probably get over it. (Or not.)

Hey—my peeps just got home! It’s a little early…sounds like they got rained out. It never rained here!