Stephanie says

That is a bushel basket filled with typically sized vegetables. Dwarfing the basket is a mammoth cabbage, weighing in at 17+ lbs.  The head is tight and slated to be shredded this afternoon and fermented into sauerkraut.  Sharpen the knives. Old fashioned green grapes ripened on the vine.  The fig tree produced the largest ever crop resulting in lots of dried fruit and fig syrup. My new favorite is rhubarb syrup.  The stalks cut today are macerating in sugar for a couple days.  The syrup has the flavorful tang of rhubarb.  A refreshing drink mix with club soda. 

Late at night, fast asleep in my bed, Rosie growls and wakes me.   I rouse enough to recognize two men and a woman speaking.   Speaking is not the right word.   “Confessing” better serves.   My neighbors, suffering a horrible time.   One man is so distraught; he is sobbing broken-heartedly, and issues a heart-rending outraged roar of suffering.   It tears me to the core.   My windows are closed but enough sound comes through to recognize another man speaking to soothe, passing through the glass.   To no avail.   The woman spoke too.   Murmured really.   I couldn’t make out the words.   I didn’t want to make them out. The outrage seemed directed at her.   Draw your own conclusions.   Matters of the heart.   Who knows besides the participants? This morning I leave very, very early to walk the dog.   I need to get outside and reclaim my wa on this beautiful morning; dawn is barely breaking; the hor...

Here is a task for you, gentle reader.  Recall a moment of perfect peace and contentment in your life.  Here's mine. I’m somewhere around twelve years, on a late summers day.   Unbidden, I’ve weeded the rhododendron shrubs beneath my bedroom window.   Task done, dappled in shade, I lay my head beneath the plant canopy and breathe in the all-encompassing aroma of healthy soil.   I’m 12.   I know nothing about soil but I trust the richness of scent swirling airborne, caught in olfactory memory forever.   In that moment, (where I can take myself in a heartbeat 50 years later,) I am oh, so content.   I am the world’s laziest kid.   I do things like hide in my closet, nose in a book, to avoid the unending tasks my mother finds for me.   She has to find me first, however.   I’ve got a cozy setup in my closet - a reading light and a stack of pillows for comfort.   The hardest thing is disappearing without a trace.   It re...

My cousin Gayle (and her husband) bought the McGilchrist Building in Salem and invested a couple of long years restoring the monster; just a little something to do in their retirement. It should be noted that they are not retirement bound after all because they've opened an Italian restaurant/grocery/catering business on the ground floor. Lovely, lovely job.  I'm very proud of Gayle, (and Doug, but to forgo any appearance of political correctness and save typing so many extraneous pronouns, I am hereby assigning all credit to Gayle.  So sue me.) Eschewing my hermit tendencies, with Baby Henry in Salem (unseen for a couple weeks), an invite to a wine tasting at a much loved cousin's new restaurant, and committed sherpa duty transporting Tyler's new couch and chair, I drove the 120 miles to Salem.   And thoroughly enjoyed myself at the wine tasting.  It is an Italian market and has a wide selection of Italian products, of which I'm thoroughly enamored....

By now my readers (and hopefully I do have readers,) know I work at an accounting firm.  Wait a sec, I'm the only employee, so perhaps "firm" isn't the right word. Whatever.  Rather than be distracted by semantics, here's the story I'm trying to tell: The local Methodist Church is my client and Mary Lou handles offering deposits and church mail.  By default, as church membership has declined in the past twenty years due to aging and a declining population.  Mildred Whipple, a person I wish I'd known, grandmother to my boys, (figuratively speaking) established an annual endowment for the church.  That's tidbit isn't relevant to this story.  I just wanted to get it in writing that Mildred had much foresight and was a generous, generous woman. On task:  Mary swings by on the Monday.  Sometimes again later in the week should she need a check.  A tiny woman of octogenarian age, (mostly) salt and pepper curls, and a thorough hoot. I'm delight...

Browsing Facebook, an infrequent pastime (hmpft;   I have much better things to do with my time, no judgment of course…), I click through various links and drill down here and there and happen on a previously unseen page for my boy, Don.   Damn, I think he moved to Nebraska.   I feel an immediate loss.   He’s lived in Oregon since college, transplanting from Nebraska a long, long time ago.   I am bereft.   I’m nonplussed at this feeling. I shoot off an email.   Get a reply post haste.   Phew, he’s still here. I can't really express this but  Oregon would be emptier without him.  How do you know when you first meet someone that they’re going to impact your life so tremendously?   I had no clue the first time I laid eyes on Don Willey, a new friend then of my (first and likely only) husband.   We were at a trade show?   My husband had a landscaping display, (he was truly gifted in this trade) and people were...

This morning, a general futzing around:   watering the garden; cleaning house; performing a couple small repairs.   All put aside for an interlude of movie watching this afternoon.   I am delightfully alone in my clean house, (and even a tidy house if my peripheral vision is blocked from the stack of toys piled in a corner.)   My daughter and her family have been here for five weeks.   I love my daughter.   I’m enjoying getting to know her husband.   I’m bonding with baby Henry.   Then again, I savor my alone-time wholeheartedly.     All is good, he's got his rock.