I recently recalled a chat I had a few decades back with a homesteading friend of mine about how we organized our lives. It was long before cell phones. I don’t even think I owned a computer. We were both into making lists in little notebooks and on scraps of folded paper. “What about Sundays?” We both had special lists for Sundays. To make it to the Sunday list it had to be important, but not critical. The Sunday list was the stuff that would be really good to do but not till Sunday. The other Monday to Saturday stuff can’t wait. The Sunday stuff can wait till Sunday.

Now thirty or forty years later, I still have that Sunday list mentality. I still have those little notebooks and bits of paper. I still keep an assortment of pencils and pens scattered around the house and tucked into various pockets. My thinking is that, if I write Sunday stuff down, I can forget about it for now and do other things… on the other lists.

So this Sunday morning I roamed around the farm, checking out this, measuring that, cleaning up this, putting away that, and checking items off the Sunday list. So productive! In the afternoon I went out to the BRC with my trusty hand-pruners. I surveyed the blackberries and trimmed back some impressively towering canes along the paths. I cleared out around the rhubarb plants. I propped up some fruit-laden branches on the Gray Pearmain tree. I took note of what’s coming into bloom. The Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) is now officially there. I did a little pruning. All of it important. None of it essential. It was Sunday. The hot afternoon floated by. And then it was 6:00. The dogs were barking. I could hear a car. Relatives had arrived. I put the Felcos back in the shop and headed for the house.