The Ups and Downs of Self Supervision

AS a part of my "Different Kind of August" I gave myself the assignment of a weekly blog entry.   This morning, I'm regretting that decision.  It's Monday and another post is due.  I could recycle, using something I wrote some time in the past.  That worked in college when I had an essay due and my mind was blank, just grab something from last year and retype it.  That's to cheap,  I won't let myself do it on only the second week of August.  Save that for November.
So, here I am like a seventh grader with an essay due tomorrow and the blank screen before me.  Nobody wants to hear that the fall rains have started and that the fireweed has topped out.  We can talk about slugs,  the great invaders that are doing their best to eat my whole garden.  No, can't go negative.

Yesterday,  I bailed six inches of water out of the rowboat and rowed down to the island after dinner.  That time of night I hoping to spot bears but no luck.  The red salmon in the lake are showing the colors that give them their name, turning bright red with green heads.  As they charge the mouth of the creek on the east end of the lake the look like redcoats running from the minutemen at Concord.  The water tends to be calm on these wet days when the cloud hand low overhead and the lake is free of the fair-weather folks who only venture out when the weather is sunny and warm.  That leaves the place to those who tend to enjoy moving out on the water regardless of the weather.  Although we are pretty wet this week, the air and the lake are warmer than usually, and I find myself overdressed when I go out to collect my daily bounty of slugs.  Yes, slugs.

For those of you who don't know, slugs are small vegetable pests that will consumer entire plants and look life snails without shells?  Does that make them Homeless?   Anyway  they are the most revolting thing living on our property that I know of and the best way we know to deal with them is to pick them by hand and drop them into a cup of salt.   This leaves our hands wet and slimy after a bit of picking, usually with rain running down our backs.  I asked Madelyn, "How hungry would you have to be to eat slugs?"   "I would starve," she snarled, "They are too disgusting."    OKAY!
But, it is an ill wind that blows no good.  Slugs have given me something to write about this Monday morning in the rain.
One final word.  Those of us who work at home also live at work.   And those who work for themselves have no one else to blame.