And the road goes on forever...

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Winding Down


Summer is rapidly winding down into autumn’s start. Due to our high temps this summer, leaf changing seems to have been delayed by a week or two and is just now beginning so no eye candy as yet. I just finished up my annual gig helping out at the Fall O’Rama bake sale for the shelter, and nary a tree was showing orange as yet. The pumpkins and fall décor were out in full force by the vendors however. One idea I really liked was the Solar Garden Lamp booth using cast off glassware like I am doing with my flowers. It was another year of my bread being a hit but my flowers not so much.
Finally, even the garden is waning rapidly. I tried processing the largest sunflower head into roasted seeds which Marc indicated were acceptable. The tomatoes still cling to the decaying branches of the plants but are taking about twice as long to ripen and have switched their colors from deep red to orange. It takes another few days on the window sill to get them to their prime. I have had hundreds that I have had to freeze for future use; Marc hopes to make pasta sauce! I must have harvested at least 50 spaghetti squash, some also before its prime, as the squash beetles totally took over so they sit in the basement maturing now. There are a few onions (which woefully failed to thrive) left to harvest and one last segment of fingerling carrots which I may get to today. Since we had no time to really care for the apple trees this year I had bad crops from two but the front tree has produced some worth saving. I have processed and frozen very few as compared to last year’s harvest though.
Of note coming up is that Marc has been living with a hernia for quite some time and its now imperative that he get it fixed so he is due to go in for surgery on Oct. 12th. I’ll play nursemaid to him for a couple weeks while he has a chance to hopefully get caught up on some much needed rest. It’s a pretty sad day when a man looks forward to surgery as an escape from working himself to death. The continual stress, such long hours, and miles and miles he has to drive weekly have continued to take their toll and he is so burnt out he has almost ceased to be able to function. Given that, I try not to press him to attend to much around the house so the projects left to do will remain just that. Daily, he yearns to be able to retire, but there is no rest for the weary and the road in front of him still stretches out many, many years. We both try to make do with our quiet life—thankful we have one left.

Yesterday, we attended a memorial party for our back neighbor—a lady my age who had just retired six months ago. They had finished building their large beautiful home at the same time as us when she just found out in July that she had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. By early September she was dead; hardly having gotten used to the fact that she was to die shortly, let alone having been able to enjoy her new and long dreamed for retirement home. Now her husband is left with the dog to rattle around in their 4000 s.f. McMansion alone. Sometimes I think life gets more precious the simpler it becomes due to age, because there becomes so much less left of it.