CHRISTMAS IN THE AIR

I just stepped out onto the deck to sweep last night’s new snowfall away; it’s downright nippy out there.  Yesterday was a totally different story.  It was so balmy and bright I took a few minutes to sit in the sunshine and soak up the warmth.  The weather app on my phone says we will be back to that in just a couple days.  It kind of feels like Mother Nature has been partaking of fermented apples and can only manage a lurching stagger towards winter ... you know – one step forward, two steps back.

Eventually, though, we will all make it to Christmas so it’s time people start getting ready. By ‘people’ I really mean ‘me’, but go ahead and include yourself in this group if the circumstances warrant.

First on the list is gift shopping.  There are local trade fairs and craft shows to explore and home town businesses to support.  I’m not sure if it’s the age I am or that Covid restrictions have influenced what I think is important, but my sense of what’s necessary is not the same as it used to be.  Yes, there will still be gifts for everyone under the tree in 2021, but they will be smaller and more practical – no one needs more stuff for stuff’s sake.  The best thing about 2021 is that we will open these gifts together.  December 2020 was a very quiet day that gave us lots of time to think about what a dud of a day it is without the ones you love there to share it with.

The next thing on my list is writing a Christmas letter and getting it away to friends and family.  I know.  I know.  How old fashioned is that?  But, you know?  Everyone loves getting letters and the most effective way to get letters is to send letters.  Throughout my life I have transitioned from hand written pages to photocopied messages to the easiest form of all: a length-and-weight-doesn’t-matter email.  This year I am contributing to my Canada Post pension stability by snail mailing out 80 real, live, physical envelopes because there are photos to share.  They will hit the mail this week; another job done and dusted.

While I was grocery shopping the other day I noticed that eggs were on sale.  I immediately thought to myself that this was a push from the Christmas Baking Angels; it was time for butter tarts and poppycock and puff pastry lemon cheese tarts and mincemeat cookies and a bunch of other things with more calories than ingredients.  Also the boxes of chocolates, Turtles, Toffifee and all the other Christmas goodies are out.  I refuse to buy any of these until we are done the mini chocolate bars from Halloween ... another couple days should do it.

Decorating is done in stages.  On a beautiful day at the end of October I went out and strung lights through the branches of a huge evergreen tree, installed a set of lights around a pole so that it looks like another Christmas tree in the dark, and stapled my two deer to the ground so they wouldn’t blow over.  Everything worked 100% at the time but of course we’ve had that hurricane since then.  My looks-like-another-tree-in-the-dark illusion is half dead (broken wire somewhere) and there are several lights on the big tree that lost their coloured covers in the wind.  Because I stapled the deer in place they are still where I put them but I’ve had to go out and adjust wiring so the buck’s head lights up again. 

The next project will be the inside.  This may or may not be a big job depending on whether I can source a tree to decorate; apparently 2021 is not a good year to be looking for a tree.  It’s always a big job to fetch all the ‘trimmings’ from the attic, and even bigger if the grandkids are there to “help” grandpa discover treasures up there.  I may be getting too old for these shenanigans.

But, not all of the shenanigans.  Last year was a season of no shenanigans at all and once was enough for that.  I want the noise and confusion of five cousins over excited for Santa’s visit.  I want everyone complaining that there are too many goodies to be healthy – and eating them anyway.  I want the yard covered in toboggan and quad tracks.  I want the lights twinkling on the tree, and I want mugs of tea and quiet conversations after the kids have conked out for the night.

May we all be safe from illness, travel troubles, and whatever Mother Nature might throw at us.

Merry Christmas and Happy 2022!

 

SEASONAL DISARRAY

The days get shorter and the nights get longer.  Gone are the summer days so full of garden weeding and yard work that sleep comes looking for me, not the other way around.  These days the most exercise I get is vacuuming and letting the cat and dog in and out ... and out and in ... and in and out yet again.  I can’t decide if it’s neurosis or a compulsive disorder, or even who has it – the humans or the pets.

This is a time of seasons in flux.  There’s a little bit of everything out there.

Some days act like it’s still September and I can hang clothes out on the line to dry.  Halloween has come and gone but there is still residual candy around the place because, even though we haven’t had trick or treaters here in probably a decade I continue to buy the candy just in case.  Beginning earlier every year I purchase our supply, refreshing it as need be until the big day.  We wouldn’t want to be the household who hands out stale candy, after all.

So it is that in November there are still a few mini candy bars left – weirdly, the ones we don’t particularly care for – and I keep losing my favorite rockets candies under the wrapping paper as I get a start on Christmas gifts.

I took down the skeleton and spiders a week after I put up the outdoor Christmas lights.

Last week I stuck a poppy in my lapel and wondered how many of them I will lose before Remembrance Day, and how many times I will stab myself when I replace the lost ones.

The lawn mower is finally stored away but the snow blower hasn’t been attached to the tractor yet. 

My flip flops are still out and I don’t know where my snow boots are.  Do I even have some?  Didn’t I throw the old ones away because I decided I needed a new pair this year?

 I should go look.

Nah! I like living on the edge.

Even my flower beds look undecided with where we are at in the year.  Some of the tougher plants still have green leaves and flaunt their hardiness in the shortened hours of daylight while the more delicate babies are covered in straw and await a good covering of insulating snow to help them make it through the night.  Already I dream of what I will plant next year ... because I just really can’t help myself.  (There’s that neurosis vs. compulsive disorder question again.)

Yesterday I sat down to compose the 2021 Christmas letter making it the fourth writing project I have on the go at the moment ... what could go wrong with a scenario like that?  Let me know if this starts sounding like blurb for a vacation guide, okay?

For the first time in my life I am seriously considering buying an artificial Christmas tree.  Is this a sign that I am becoming being frugal? The price of real trees gets crazier every year; it will only take three Christmases to pay for the fake one I have my eye on.  At the moment I am stalled out wondering if Christmas will ever be the same if I can simply plug in the tree and the lights just come on?  It’s a long standing tradition in my family for the mom to go off the deep end trying to get all the lights to work at the same time. 

And, what will I do with all my lights that (mostly) work?  As you can see, this is not a decision to be taken lightly.

Meanwhile I continue to deal with my jumbled seasons.  I will honor the Remembrance Day services, if only on TV, but will also review my Christmas card list.  I’m fighting the urge to buy Christmas chocolates when the Halloween candy isn’t quite gone yet and it’s almost time to start Christmas baking.  On the other hand one needs to think about having all those calories in the house and how it leads to the same old New Year’s resolution I’ve made and broken for decades. (Again there’s that mental stability concern – doing the same thing over and over yet wanting a different result).

Well, enough of that, it’s supposed to snow tomorrow.  I think I’ll go hang out in my greenhouse for a bit, the remote thermometer says it’s plus 16 and I know it still smells a little bit like summer.  

 

((HUGS))

The best gifts are the unexpected ones.

I was having a busy day yesterday - company coming today, floors to wash, arrangements for supper to be made – when I got a text that threw one more thing into my afternoon. I was now going to a funeral too.

In the morning I had considered attending this service, but things got busy and with Covid one is never sure whether you should add to the crowd inside a building. As luck, or Fate, would have it the oldies channel I was listening to played My Ding-a-Ling, a novelty song by Chuck Berry from 1972 and I had to laugh out loud. This was the era I knew David from and this song never failed to remind me of him. I think he sang it as his theme song for the better part of a year. There is nothing better than happy memories, no church service was going to do a better job of honoring him so I decided I would carry on with my day and bake cookies.

But there was another unexpected gift to come. My high school girlfriend – the reason I knew David – texted me saying they were on their way to the funeral, was I going to be there? This altered everything again.

Although it’s impossible that this is true, it has been a half century since our high school days. We live way too far apart. Facebook keeps us informed of what’s going on in each other’s lives but that is no replacement for spending time together, laughing together, and sharing hugs. On the rare occasion that this can be arranged we are literally the girls who can sit down and take up conversation like it’s only been a week since we last talked, even if it’s been more like a decade.

The cookies would have to wait.

I may be wrong but I’ve always thought that the most important part of a funeral is the time of fellowship afterwards. We gathered outside the church and in the fresh air could put our masks away and smile and laugh and talk. It wasn’t just my friend, but her brothers and many other faces from a shared past. People who I hadn’t seen in a coon’s age – or several coon’s ages, as was pointed out.

We stood across the street from the school where we all began our lives. So much has happened since we walked those hallowed halls ... higher education, jobs, marriages, kids, travels, and now retirement too. There have been good times and bad, divorces and deaths, celebrations and struggles. One would need a full three day reunion to even scratch the surface on catching up with everyone, but all we had was a few minutes out in a chilly breeze on an October afternoon.

They were precious minutes.

How do you cover all the time that’s passed? The experiences we probably have in common, how we’ve been shaped, how we’ve grown, how lessons we learned together so long ago may have influenced decisions we made later on. There just isn’t enough time for all of that – so you distill how you feel into one, single act – a wordless, yet enormously powerful, bear hug.

Man, it was good to see you guys!

And I was right, waiting didn’t hurt the cookies at all.

 ME vs BUGS

So help me Hannah, if one more maple bug even so much as touches me I'm going to ...

I'm going to ...

Well, I'm going to cringe, shudder with revulsion, and shoo it away as fast as I can, that's what I'm going to do!  Just like the thousand other times they've touched me this fall.

You think I exaggerate.  I do not exaggerate.  A thousand is probably low-balling it.

I'm not a scaredy-cat.  I'm made of pretty tough stuff, actually.  There was a time when I waited for my knight in shining armor to save me from life's terrors but I have become much more self reliant.  I can dispatch a garter snake if I find one too close to my house and I have mastered setting and emptying mouse traps all by myself.  A year ago I got myself a self propelled mouse trap with its own disposal unit built right in - he's the best thing since sliced bread.

Not to damage the Knight's ego I still let him deal with skunks though.  Can't have him feeling like he's not needed.

But that still leaves me battling the insect kingdom.  This time of year it's a full time job.

Wood tick season was short.  Don't know what was up with that - maybe the species is dying out?  Hope springs eternal.

The summer was so dry mosquitoes weren't much of a problem.  They were not missed.

The grandchildren came for visits and in time honored grandchild tradition held the doors open for what seemed like hours at a time.  The little darlings went home and I eventually got the fly population down to pre visit numbers.

The odd bee always finds his way into the house. I have no idea where they come from but I do my best to do 'catch and release' with them.  I know we need them to feed the world.

Then came fall and I picked my tomatoes.  As per usual tiny fruit flies followed them in and infested the house.  I set up a pop bottle/stale beer trap.  At least they die happy.

Next, the barn fly population took a look at their tiny little watches and realized they were supposed to be moving in for canning season.  Instantly the windows and doors were covered with the free loading buggers.  I honestly have no clue where those icky, yucky, squishy striped flies come from but they now outnumber the regular flies two to one.  I loath them all with equal passion.

I wish I could say that was the end of it, but oh no, there were still the maple bugs to come.  I would rather deal with spiders. 

All decked out in red and black and creeping forward in their slow, insidious, mindless march they have infiltrated my house.  Google says they are looking for a warm place to bunk down for the winter.  I say they invade my personal space with the single purpose of grossing me out.  Google also says they are harmless.  Google hasn't seen what happens when a maple bug lands stealthily on my shirt and then makes its way up to my collar.  I tell you, what happens when I feel something that big crawling up my neck, well it's NOT harmless.

I know it's a lovely fall.  I agree that still having flowers in bloom in October is something to enjoy.  I also wish it would snow.  Like a ton.  Maybe three tons.  Just to make those creepy bugs go away

Until then my weapon of choice never leaves my side.  The guy who invented the vacuum cleaner is my hero.

 

LOLLYGAGGING

The first thing the Farmer said to me this morning was “Another day, another dollar.”

This is true, even this year of extreme heat and hap hazard rains, because we no longer put our own crop in.  The secret to making money at farming is to rent your land out to someone else and leave the expense, gamble and stress to them.  If you enjoy working the land and the feelings of pride and fulfillment associated with putting in and taking off a crop (which he does) it is easy to get a job doing just that.  The really neat thing about farming this way if you get a guaranteed pay check for your work without having to worry about the futures markets, crop insurance or the latest insect or disease to come along and cost a crazy money to deal with.

They are well into harvest, the swathing and combining and baling and fixing goes on day after day, but he will get his dollar – it’s a sure thing.

That’s not to say he isn’t getting worn down with the long hours and demanding pace.  There is no such thing as a day off when the weather is good in September.  He leaves the yard by 7:30 in the morning and I don’t see him again until after dark unless I’m called to help him move to the next field.  I have explained the concept of retirement to him on several occasions.  He doesn’t get it.

As we lingered over our second cup of coffee he asked “So, what are you going to do today?”

I listed off a whole bunch of things on my agenda: we are having company overnight so I had bedrooms to prepare and a supper to plan, it’s the Labour Day weekend when I usually wash windows, the gardens all needed clean up, I should go into town and visit his mother, the grass needs mowing again ...

I ended off with “Any or all of these may or may not get done today, who knows?”  I’m retired and actually understand the concept.

“So, you’re going to lollygag then?”

Well, that’s not the way I would have described it, but okay, maybe I am.  As I said, I am retired and have a good grasp of what that means.

He’s been off to earn his dollar for two hours now and so far I have made up the beds, decided on the supper menu, cleared up the breakfast dishes, wandered around the flower beds, weeding as I went, and now I find myself at the computer writing this blog – something that wasn’t even on my list.  I also spent some time scrolling through Facebook (that genuinely is lollygagging).  It’s not as much fun as usual with all the election propaganda these days and there is only so much time in the day to spend deleting the anti-vax posts.

I am left pondering what my next move will be.  I just got a text saying my company won’t be here till suppertime so I have a good block of time to get something done, or I could carry on with my lackadaisical lollygagging.

I kind of like the sound of that.

 

ALL OVER IT

Remember, way last spring when the blush was still on the rose, so to speak.

Remember how I couldn’t wait for the snow to melt?  How my big front window housed a double decker plant table so all the babies I started had a clear shot at the strengthening sunlight?  How I went through my garden seeds multiple times, making sure I had enough of everything? How I monitored the night time temperatures constantly, hardly able to wait until I could trust the safety of plants in my little greenhouse?

I was all over that like white on rice.  I couldn’t wait to get my hands into earth, watch things grow, plan where things would go.  So exciting!

And then, do you remember how I couldn’t wait till my farmer got out there and tilled my garden?  And how satisfying it was to get the potatoes planted?  And then the rest of the garden?  And how this year, for the first time, I didn’t try to do all my deck planters the same day?  How much easier that went?  And how, while it was sad that not one single foxglove made it through the winter, it was fortunate that they were already dead because they would have been trampled to death anyway when we revamped the deck.  That would have made me even sadder.

Do you recall how happy I was when the rows started pushing through. Straight lines of lettuce, swiss chard, peas and beans ... and those 12 hours of radishes before the flea beetles found them.  Do you remember the very next day when the weeds all showed up too?  I can’t say that I was all over that, but I was on top of it ... for one day.  I think it was June 13^th.  That was a very good day.

Do you remember how lush and green everything was back then?  The grass was soft to walk on and it smelled so good when I mowed it.  And there were tiny purple violets everywhere.  And there were hummingbirds and orioles at the feeders. And there was no stagnant water to breed mosquitoes?  Ah!  Those were the days.  I was all over that too.

It was a little worrisome though - the dry conditions - but my farmer came through with a watering system from the dugout that he’s been talking about for a couple years and had started last fall.  With no threat to our well I was able to water to my heart’s content.  I tell you, I have been all over that!  While other gardens were stunted in their tracks my flowers bloomed, my vegetables thrived.

Then the extreme heat set in.  It was time to work on the deck and the heat was just ugly out there.  The grass went crunchy, water or not the vegetable leaves began to curl and flowers dropped their blossoms, plants desperate to propagate the next generation cut their life span short and went to seed immediately.  The only things left green in my lawn by the end of July were dandelions and they smell awful when you mow them.

We’ve been lucky enough to get a couple rains but you won’t remember me talking about them – it feels like bragging when so many others have received nothing wet from the skies all summer long.  Crops are stunted or dead, watering holes are all but empty, pastures nibbled to the ground, and feed depleted.  The sale off of beef herds is as inevitable as it is heart-breaking.

This next week I’ve been invited to go camping with some family members for a kind of mini reunion.  When we came up with this plan it sounded like a great idea – girl time, lazy meals, away-from-the-maddening-crowd stuff.  I was all over that kind of break.

Because I’m officially on to the other kind of all over it as far as my yard and garden is concerned.  I’m over weeding – you should see the mess I’ve got going on out there.  I need the tractor and tiller to swipe through again.  I’m over everything but cucumbers, tomatoes and corn.  The planters have either baked to death or bloomed themselves out.  Yep, I’m pretty much completely over the summer of 2021.

And, talk to me after a week camping at the lake ... the temperatures are supposed to soar to new heights for the next three days.  I’m betting I will soon be over holidays too.  Maybe a person should start Christmas shopping ... in air conditioned malls.

I could so be all over that.

 

COOL, PRECIOUS COOL

The first thing I do every morning is get up and lock the cool in.  It’s the most important job of the day.

I can’t remember when this hot streak started (I think my brain is a little baked) but the ‘normal hot’ days have been few and far between.  Mostly it’s been day after day of unrelenting abnormally high temperatures and smoke haze from forest fires over a thousand miles away.  Locally we won in Mother Nature’s where-should-I-scatter-my-thunderstorms-this-year lottery.  Whereas almost all of the prairies are parched, crispy fried, and crawling with grasshoppers, small pockets here and there are green again because they got rain.  We live in one of them.

Also, there are fields that are black again.  That’s what happens when the moisture from above doesn’t fall in liquid form.  A hail storm can bash a crop right back into the ground.  Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on how much hail insurance was purchased for that field.  If you are a farmer there is no need to travel to Vegas to gamble big money.

As this heat wave goes on and on I’ve been trying to come up with some coping skills to get through the torture.  Some things not to try would be building a deck on the south side of the house, or ignoring the weeds in hopes that they will go away on their own.  I try the weed experiment every year with the exact same results every single time.  I think I may be a slow learner.

2021 is not going to be a stellar year for garden harvest.  The peas are done before the end of July and the beans are only half trying.  The carrot and beet crop look plentiful, the corn loves its heat units so the few seeds that germinated are doing great and the potatoes got over watered and then rained on – half the plants are dead.  Who saw that coming in the middle of a drought?

On the other hand, the two watermelon plants I bought on impulse and plunked in the ground think they are in Mexico and are growing like mad.  It’s really hard to tell what’s going on in my tomato jungle but I think there will be quite the harvest there too.  My pumpkins are coming back from the hail shredding their leaves – if Halloween comes at Christmastime we’ll be fine.

That’s life on the outside.  Whenever possible this summer, I’ve been hanging out inside.

This may explain how the weeds got so big on me.

The second thing I do every morning is check the weather forecast.  Well, no, that’s a lie.  First I need coffee, and then I check the weather.  Not just what’s going to happen that day, but how many more days of hideous heat are still to come?  Just so you know, the long term goes as far as mid August with no end in sight.  And as important (and depressing) as those daytime temps are, the night time temps are even more crucial.

You see our house doesn’t have air conditioning, all we have is a very large ceramic tile floor which is a very inexpensive way to cool a house as long as the nights are cool.

 The last thing I do every day is open all the windows and let the cool in.  Ceramics are a fantastic conductor of heat and cold so the cooler the night the cooler the house is the next day. 

While I sip my precious coffee I check out the outdoor temperature.  Anything lower than 15 gets a little happy dance.