Sorry, folks; I’m having to shut the blog down. I tried, but I’m so overwhelmed that I just can’t do it anymore. My life is as delicious as ever, but the line between possible and impossible is becoming quite distinct. Maybe someday, when things calm down, I can regroup and try again. But for now it’s just not possible.

Our lives go on, as does yours. On Saturday I dropped two dead trees and blocked up four (two were already on the ground). I found some ripe huckleberries down in the draw. The garden is coming up famously after such a wet spring; the poultry is still cranking out 7-8 eggs daily, and we finally have a lawn! (Well, half a lawn.) Jessica’s flowers took off this year, and the aspens we adopted from the railroad last fall have actually survived. I’m planning to climb Sawtooth next month (this area’s equivalent of the Grand Teton) and so am running every weekday to get ready.

And I’m loving life. Jessica is beyond awesome—with her, it just gets better and better. Our kids are all geniuses. I’ll be doing a (semi) solo art show in Oregon this winter, and I have an interview set up at a gallery in Park City, Utah, this week. Wish me luck!

Someday, this is how my afternoon will go. Jessica and I will have just returned from town, having made the final, enormous payment on our house. I’ve lost my job, but the art, writing, and design work I do are supporting us well. With no mortgage and no land payment, we’re in sound financial shape. We emerge from the Jeep and stand together in the driveway, with the dogs prancing about us and the kids shouting “Mom! Dad!” as the sweet breeze rolls down the mountainside. Laundry flaps lazily on the line, a Swainson’s thrush sings in the firs above the house, and the summer’s stack of firewood cracks softly in the evening. We take each other’s hands and walk slowly past the flowerbeds we planted, past the house we built, down the path to our garden. The chickens run toward us, expecting a handout from the kitchen or flowerbeds; behind us, the kids tear up grass and offer it to them through the fence. We admire the fruit trees and how well the vegetables are doing. In the greenhouse, the peppers are beginning to blossom, the cucumbers have finally taken off, and the celery appears alarmingly vigorous considering the latitude. (She pulled up all the kale; it doesn’t taste as good as the Swiss chard or spinach, so she’s replaced it with chard for a fall harvest.)

We come back up to the front yard and settle into our Adirondack chairs, admiring the mountains and conversing while the kids clamber over us and run squealing about our little green patch of lawn. We slap idly at mosquitoes, throw the ball down the hill for the dogs, and discover bats flitting in the twilight. Finally, we stand and go in the house. It’s bedtime.

Come to think of it, except for the part about the job and the mortgage, this pretty well describes what happened last night.

It’s a great life. Thanks for sharing it with us.