My America: Loaded Quilt, Q. Cassetti 2013, Trumansburg, NY
It's over for this year. The great Tburg blowout, Grassroots...with lots of celebration, music and happy people all thrilled to be together, all thrilled to be experiencing great music and food, all thrilled to share the shifting elements--weathering storms and heat for four days a summer. And then, as quickly as it arrives on our doorstep, it is gone. Today is the day that the tents are collapsed and the mop up begins. I spent a little time at the festival, but the majority of it was working or just being quiet and by myself. I am very introspective these days...surfacing stuff that has been quiet, trying to make sense or if not sense, trying to see patterns, trying to get to why I am the way I am. There is a reason this is called work...and this is the front end of this progression. I hope this can be positive for me.
I have been taking great pleasure in the local "bunny routes" between Trumansburg and the lake. A "bunny route" is the route one takes that might be a single or two lane road. It is the indirect route that takes you into the countryside...through farms, by horses cows, and fields. It is the route that features the sky...and not the journey. It is the bird route where I can slow down to see the hawks on wires or smile at the orioles and goldfinches bouncing in front of the car. It is the route of Amish horsepower--teams of caramel massive strength harnessed to work. This is the route that lets you roll down the windows and smell the hay. It is haying season for at least the second time during this lush summer of rain and heat. Hay, I just found out, takes three days. One day to cut. One day to dry. And one day to bail. Those three days cannot have rain...or it changes up the length of time. Then, the golden grass is cut to the same height, creating these singularly beautiful undulating, gold/green fields peppered with either blocks of hay or rolls. I stop to take pictures but they never are as nice as what I see. This is a sweet time of the summer...where the gold and green twinkle and the verdant scent reminds me to keep going.
Kitty's friends have departed. Alex is still asleep. Rob is busy in his projects with his last day of holiday before the second push of the summer happens. It feels as if we are sitting on the downside of the summer's midpoint--with the produce beginning to kick in, the weeds in full bore, and the collection of singing birds that I forget about in the middle of the frosty winter. I am sitting in front of my big fan, saving files, researching images and making lists of things present and future that will need to be accomplished this week. Paying the college bill lurks like a stinky big dog on the horizon. I know it's there...I can smell it...ow.