August slipped away into a moment in time

This week, I couldn't help but thinking, "Ugh. Is this month ever going to end?" This might be the hottest August ever. Easter was four and a half months ago, but it seems soo much looonger! And this week, I have had the worst part of summer (heat) with the worst part of fall (school and homework), without the beauties of fall, my favorite season.

But we're close!

I ran up North Canyon five days this week. Since I go up there so often, sometimes I take it for granted. But it really is a wonderful, beautiful place.

There are some shrubs that have been red since the beginning of the month, but they always change color way before anything else, so I don't feel like they count as fall foliage.

But when the maple leaves start turning red, then you know it's starting. And I saw some this week!

This tiny oak leaf is not pretty or noteworthy, except that I watched it fall from the tree directly in front of me.

There are also a few apple trees planted along the dirt road in North Canyon, and it has started to smell like fall as the unripe apples have fallen from the trees and started to rot.

Back in June, I had the first time I ever tripped and fell on a trail run, and it was on a mostly buried rock on the North Canyon dirt road. This month, I noticed that one of the rocks had dislodged itself from the dirt and tumbled away. It's interesting but also sad to observe erosion at work.

I am happy that I am still able to go on my runs before my Zoom classes. I have class meetings on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 4:30 to 7:30. My other class is entirely online on my own schedule, with prerecorded lectures. 

It seems that all of my homework for all my classes is the same: lots of reading and then writing about what we read. The only real difference is what we're reading, so I hope I can keep it all straight. One of my classes is about American history 1600–1877, another is about borderlands, and another is about the US West. 

When possible, I read the books online, but not all are available online. (They're not textbooks, like I used in undergrad classes, but actual historical monographs.) I like to support brick-and-mortar stores and especially small businesses, so I've bought some from Barnes and Noble, but this week I went to get one from Book Garden on Bountiful's Main Street. Not only did I walk out with my book for class, I also bought a vintage book of Halloween kitsch, even though it was expensive, because I love that kind of thing. I'm more interested in looking at it than in reading it.

For some reason, the simplistic Halloween visuals of the 1940s, 50s, 60s are more appealing to me than some of the more elaborate (and less orange) visuals of today.

Even the tops of the pages are orange!

They also had an old Easter book from the same series that was priced much more reasonably, but I didn't get it. But I might have to go back to pick it up.

First day of 17th grade!

When I'm sitting on my chair with my laptop, Jimmy likes to come up to sit on my lap. It's only a matter of time before he crashes one of my class meetings.

I just adore him!

Since last week I was talking about school, I never showed you what I did with the last of our plums. I made plum pie,

 plum bread,

 and chocolate chip cookies with plum puree. (You couldn't really taste the plum.)

Now we're in zucchini mode. I've made zucchini bread,

 corn and zucchini veggie "burgers" (but I used them as taco filling because it's a hassle to make them into patties),

 and zucchini and grape oatmeal cookies.

I was startled when I looked in the Kitchenaid. I could have made grasshopper cookies (literally) instead!

I'm excited to keep making things with zucchini and grapes before apple season arrives.