Harvest Moon

For those who haven't visited lately, we have about 30 sunflower plants growing together tightly like a jungle in one corner of the yard. Meg despises them--especially since they've lost their golden yellow splendor, the heads began drooping, and the stalks began leaning over the paths in the yard because the heads are so full of seeds--but I've been looking forward to what should be a bounteous harvest--and just in time for beginning of the baseball playoffs.

So the boys and I began harvesting the sunflower seeds this week. We've plucked the seeds from four of the heads so far and filled to the brim two coffee cans (the cans used to hold our food storage staples (flour, rice, etc.)).

Tonight Aaron and I sat on chairs on the concrete slab just outside the back of the garage, and pulled seeds from what was probably the biggest head of the lot. It took us about an hour to finish, and I was impressed with Aaron's effort--he probably saved me at least 15 minutes of plucking, as we worked together until the job was done. He normally abhors work of any kind inside the house (except cooking, but is that really work?), but he almost always welcomes the chance to do outside chores.

It was a good chance to converse one-on-one in the peace of a calming and warm sunset. Aaron often shares stories of his "youth"--he's flown airplanes, explored Mars, driven trucks, and just about anything else you can imagine (he uses phrases like, "When I was seven, I used to drive a tractor on the farm."). His stories are always vivid, sincere, and detailed to the point that makes you think twice about whether he really has done these things or not. If you ask him questions about his experiences, he always replies with an answer that is relevant (and sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious).

Aaron also recognizes that now is the season when we harvest all the goodies from the garden (although our strawberries and tomatoes have yielded throughout much of the last few months), and he has mastered the appropriate vocabulary to talk intelligently about it. He learned this, I believe, from watching Meg play Harvest Moon on the Nintendo. I'm not sure what to make of that (good, because it shows there are things that you can glean from playing/watching video games; and bad, because how many hours of watching did it take for him to pick up on that???), but it is what it is.