Saying Goodbye

The blog here has been quiet lately, mostly due to my beginning a new job and not having the time or energy to keep up with it as well as my freelance gigs. Things have been churning here at the Semi-Farm, and we've been busy nearly every day and relishing our downtime as soon as we are afforded it.
It all started with a casual hunt for a new career during my leave in betweeen times of weeding the garden. I was fortunate enough in this rough economy to impress someone with my resume and personality and was offered a job with a local bank where I'd work hours similar to my husband and, for the first time in my adult life, no evenings or weekends. The pay is much less than I made at my last job, but the trade-offs in scheduling and vacation benefits are well worth the little belt tightening we will have to endure. I just couldn't say no, so I turned in my notice and have been in training ever since, learning a whole new system and various policies and government regulations I never before thought I'd ever need to know. It's been invigorating, exhausting and stressful but fun.
In between commuting to Sandusky and Norwalk, each over an hour from home, for a month, we've managed to finish painting the chicken coop and now it only needs a shelf with some nest boxes, a perch and a chicken door and we are ready to go. We have decided to wait until spring to bring our girls home, as we can take our time with fencing and building a covered area for them to run in for the winter months. So our poultry adventures are stalled for the moment as the days grow shorter, cooler and, at the moment, more moist than we'd really like.
Yesterday we said our final farewell to our first garden which, for weeks now, we'd slowly been retiring to the compost bin as the last of our peppers and eggplants were harvested. I've learned a lot from that patch of land this year, including having  patience for the earth and myself and the ability to see mistakes as opportunities rather than failures. The earth is a grand teacher is we're observant enough to hear her over the hustle and bustle of our crowded and chaotic lives. When I feel like imploring, it's most often because I haven't made the time to spend outside, breathing in clean air and with the grass beneath my feet. Especially inside the shady woods, all my problems seem to drift away on the wind, hastened along by the soft rustling of leaves, whether overhead or underfoot. I'm reminded by the grace of the seasons that some times my greatest efforts are too much pushing and too forceful and if I step back and let go, magic will certainly follow. This is evidenced in last year's spontaneous tomatoes grown from playtime creativity and this year by the fully formed butternut squash that emerged from the brush that grew over last year's compost. When I try to hard and rush things, my impatience stunts my eventual progress. This is a lesson my over-caffienated life needs repeated, often and loudly.
Otherwise, life carries on here at a slower pace now that training is over and the garden laid to rest. I am knitting my first sock very slowly and deliberately and am enjoying the calm before the winter sets in, meeting new faces and adjusting to an autumn of ease and reflection.
As winter's cold chill threatens a forced rest indoors in a few short weeks, I'll be outside enjoying the leaves and the crisp fall air and remembering that,like careers and seasons, soon everything eventually changes.