I will never grow tired of this walk or quick bike ride down our lane to pick up the paper each morning or get our afternoon mail. So much in my life has changed since I was a young girl, and I have moved many times, away from my childhood home, but this place remains nearly the same. So when we return each summer to this incredible locale, I am grateful that my daughter experiences much of what I did at her age- whether it’s biking to get the paper, picking blueberries at the neighboring U-PICK farm, going to see the closest lighthouse. These experiences grounded me, kept me connected to my midwest home and even though I’m raising a California girl, I know that somewhere deep within her, she also feels her midwestern roots.

I meant to participate in Susannah’s August Break, submitting daily photos without adding much text but the busyness of summer, which I know it isn’t supposed to be that way, well it got in the way, and my plans, had to move aside, to make room for other things and thus,  the August break idea never happened. Do you have that happen to you, too? The plans that you hope to have, and the thing that you hope to do, well, it doesn’t happen and you don’t do it, so things turn out very different instead. So, that’s where I am with this blog. It’s a bit of this and that. And truly, dear read(er). I am truly grateful that you are here. That you are willing to stop on by. Thank you.

Here are a few photos from my job, from what I do…

We hope to arrive at a property before all the fruit has fallen like in this photo above. If it has, the food on the ground goes to feed local livestock…This is how we want the trees to look, full of beautiful, ripe fruit…

ready for us to harvest and pick.

Once harvested, the food is then donated to our Food Bank. In our community,  tens of thousands of people (44,000 to be exact) are “food insecure” and need help getting food on the table.

Thank you to the farmers who allow us into their fields, for the homeowners who share their harvest, for the community that shows up to glean. Together we harvest, gather, deliver and donate to share the abundance that is growing in our county.

and get out to notice the beauty around you, the beauty that is seen only as a blur from the passenger or driver’s seat. My family and I snapped these photos when we decided to get out of the car as we were en route with a long 4-5 hour drive ahead of us. Funny enough, these are some of my favorite pics I took this summer.

How can we turn our mundane, routine moments into something special? Sometimes it’s just about pulling over. I challenge you, my 1-2 readers, to do the same. Take a moment in your drive that you might do every day, or the drive as you are heading somewhere special, stop, get out–alone, or with friends or family who are in the car with you. Set up the self timer or pass the camera around and snap a few quick pics. They just might turn out to be your favorite shots of the summer.