beautiful day

 This morning there was a hole in our wall (a long-awaited hole, fixing our water-damaged wall and front door), so after doing some stuff around the house (pancakes, By the Banks of Plum Creek, a spelling bee, a la prairie times), we headed Out.

 "Mama, why does Laura always manage to get into so much trouble?" Like what? "Well, like sliding down the hay bales when her Pa asked her not to..." Well...I imagine it just sounded like so much fun she had to try it anyway...So of course we were in search of some hay bales. Found some...

Yup - fun!  It was such a beautiful day; signs of fall everywhere...grasses going to seed, milkweed pods bursting, butterflies everywhere, leaves turning color...thistles blooming, ironweed losing its bloom...

Berries everywhere - not many that I recognized, but we looked for Autumn Olives and found a few that were not ready yet. I think they're the second flush though; I saw some last week somewhere else and they were delicious and abundant.

Not a bad way to spend a school day, is it?

Eliza brought along her corn cob doll that she made two years ago...

When we got home, there was immediate clothes making for the dolls.

And some lunch somewhere in amongst the fabric and scissors.

Voila! Fancied-up new clothes for all the dolls.

We were having such a good-flow day that even though our living room still looked like this:

We just went on with what we were doing. Happily. Eliza thought destroying a wall looked like so much fun that she mouthed to me (in between asking questions), "I think I want to do this for a living!" 

We had intended on eating something special for dinner tonight...

A giant puffball! A friend gave it to us yesterday when we visited his farm. I would only eat a wild mushroom that I was certain was edible - I'm not much for experimentation in that field - so as his family has been eating these every year for the past few, from the same patch on his farm, I think it's a safe bet.  The construction went on well into the dinner hour, so we walked up the hill and met Dan at the local pub for some dinner. Tomorrow, then, for the puffball.