It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year.
It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow.
Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.
–W.E.B. Du Bois
Every now and then it's nice to harvest something tangible.
Picking peppers this morning in the garden… so luminously lovely and delicious to gaze upon. Firm and colorful.
A visible, direct product of hours of labor, from manure to tilling to weeding to harvest, and all the little steps in between.
Today I have been indulging in a Vermont Summer Day. That deserves capitalization. Low humidity, bright sun; an easy breeze sending mosquitoes to hover in the shadows.
The peppers are now sauteéd with leeks, also from the garden: fat, happy leeks that have loved all the rain we've suffered with this summer. And together they are frozen for winter soup.
The last two weeks have been consumed by teaching watercolor technique at Castleton College. The class was a mixed bag of ability, interest, commitment and age level. Ultimately good work was done by all. It's a challenge to squeeze a semester into 10 days, but our final critique revealed strong growth.
A different sort of colorful harvest.
Now to the studio to work with a different sort of form and color in search of another harvest.