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So far we have had spectacular weather for Labor Day weekend. On Friday we had a visit from Ivan and Elizabeth Saperstein, who brought fried chicken. We contributed a salad from our overflowing supply of tomatoes and cucumbers.

Today, Daisy grazed near the hammock where I spent part of the afternoon, resting after a morning bout of vine-cutting.

Labor Day is alway a bit wistful, a punctuation mark at the end of summer. It is even more so this year. After almost exactly six months here, we will return to New York next Sunday. Sarah returns to school in person on September 16.

Here is Jen, harvesting carrots and tomatoes from her resplendent garden.

And here she is on the sun porch, worrying about Concord Academy’s return-to-school plans. She has many under her care!

Petty well, I would say.

This evening we had dramatic skies, and reflections, after a Sunday thunderstorm. Sarah and Jen spent much of the day in Kingston, gathering supplies for Sarah’s new mask-making business, while I battled various invasive vines in the woods and Daisy slept on the front stoop.

This is about as close as one might want to come to a coyote — and possibly a bit closer. This one wandered into the yard next to the cottage while I was working.

It is unquestionably fully summertime, with temperatures in the nineties, full-scale jam operations underway, and lazy afternoons in the pond.

Here is Daisy performing her nightly task of clearing the deer from the field.

This week we had a visit from John Harris and his boys, who, together with their yellow lab Milo, are driving cross country to visit John’s mother in Little Compton, Rhode Island. It is always great to see the Harris family, and Daisy and Milo got along like old friends.

I cannot say it was the most joyous July 4th we’ve spent at the farm, with a B2, an F-15, and a B-52 passing overhead on their way to an air show and our president promising statues, walls, and graves, but Daisy is unperturbed by such matters, and by all other matters as well.

After dinner we put on our masks and climbed Burger Hill to watch the fireworks up and down the valley.

The world is far from perfect, making this weekend’s splendid, cool weather a relief.

Here are the last of the peonies.

Here is Del Wolcott, spotted this afternoon as he was clearing the horse trails. We bought the farm from Del in 2007, when he was nearing eighty and thought the farm would be too much work to maintain. Now he’s in his nineties, still driving the tractor. He stopped by to let me know that the water pipe into the barn had burst.