Hold the presses!
After a long hiatus, I am finally blogging about biking again.Here's hoping it inspires me for more frequent blogging about crafting, sustainability, etc. too, here at handcrafted life!

Enjoying the season (and seeking seasonal gardening advice)
I miss blogging! You'd think with both kids at college, I'd have more time, but somehow the grad. school/working full-time/taking care of other life tasks with intentionality (rather than buying packaged foods, for example) seem to still cut into the blogging time. Fortunately DD came home and requested apple-picking, giving me not only a photo op but a nice excuse to slow down and app

Soup therapy
(This is just a gratuitous, updated picture of the girls, because really, can you ever get enough of chicken pictures? That short green fence is supposed to keep them out of the garden, but I can't say

Dahlia season
September in the garden is fabulous. This is the first year that I have grown dahlias, but it most definitely will not be the last. I got these as tubers, back in May,at the Proud Market of the Rochester Civic Garden Center, from the Rochester Dahlia Society. They have done much better than any that I have gotten as plants. They're so big and bushy that I have tomato cages around them to contain their exuberance!

Transitions
For her eighteenth birthday, back in the spring, DD's best friend got a tattoo. DD went with her and got one too. The best friend's mom went with them and got one too. I went with them too, but I hadn't found the right design, so I deferred. It was really fun, though, two best friends and their moms. When ea