Giving Thanks

My friend’s daughter’s surgery for cancer went well and the pathology report is that she is all clear.  Other friends will be traveling this week to see their mother, probably for the last time.  They weren’t sure she’d live this long, but they are ready for this last visit with a mother who has lived a good life and finished the work she was given to do.   Hubby and I assisted our youngest at her Barn Party today.  It was for kids and their parents with a horseback rides, face painting, three legged races, caramel apples, and much more. And the rain held off.  A  pregnant friend is nearing her due date which the doctor says may very well be on my birthday.  My 86 year old mom is doing very well, canning umpteen quarts of grapes on Friday while knitting an afghan and hat for a new baby and preparing several dishes for the church potluck. And the fire in our wood stove is warming me up.

So many things to be thankful for already, 4 days before Thanksgiving.

Photo from Christart.com

Starry, Starry Morning

I was nearly to the end of our long driveway just after 5:00 a.m., heading out on my daily morning walk.

I do it all in the same way every day. Grab my phone and the house keys and the small flashlight, even though I probably won’t turn it on but I will have it with me just in case, because it’s very, very dark at 5:00 a.m. in November in the hinterlands of the Pacific Northwest.  I’ve put the itsy, bitsy, flashing light on the dog collar because Joe, the black lab, is very, very hard to see at 5:00 a.m when it’s very, very dark.  I’ve opened the gate to the chicken yard so that when the girls get up they can run around my yard. And I’ve gone into the adjoining pump house, scooped up the day’s layer pellets and filled their bowl.

I’ve done all of the usual mindless, repetitive things I do each morning and am half way down my long driveway when I finally wake up and look around. And I am stopped in my tracks by the light.  Not by one bright light but by the shock of looking up into the black sky and seeing it punctuated by hundreds of thousands of extraordinarily bright stars.  The air was cold and clear and the stars glittered and twinkled and put on such a show I had to stop and stare.

But my schedule kept nudging me so I continued my walk and continued on with the rest of my day.

Recalling all of this now, for you, at the end of my day, helps me hold on to the memory of this extraordinary morning for a bit longer.

You Say Tomato, So Do I

The frost took out my tomato plants weeks ago.  Of course, just days after the deadly frost it warmed up to perfect tomato ripening weather.  Except the plants were now dead and I’d harvested every one of the 50 pounds of green tomatoes off the frozen vines before they were frozen, too.  I brought all of those green tomatoes into the house and spread them out to ripen in the house.

I’m not a canner. I don’t know how and I don’t want to learn how.  Besides, I now have a glass top oven and you can’t can on glass top ovens.  (Thank goodness.)

I’m a dryer. I slice up the ripe tomatoes, toss them with a bit of olive oil and dried basil and dried oregano and garlic powder and put them in my food dehydrator and make my own “sun-dried” tomatoes. Done in no time.  And so good!

I may have one more batch to dry unless we start eating a lot of tomatoes. The last two bowls of fruit are ripening fast.

The last taste of this year’s garden.

I Can See!

I’m sure it’s because of my poor posture and improper keyboarding position and general laziness, but my hands keep resting on random keys while I’m typing on my laptop with this miserable keyboard mouse, and my goodness, the things this computer can do without my permission!  Particularly, in this Blog program.  My left hand rests on some key and viola! my blog screen got smaller, and smaller, and smaller until I could barely see it.

So I tried clicking on every key near my left hand.  Nothing.  I tried every trick I could think of from my limited bag of computer ideas.  Nothing.  I logged off the program and prayed for a miracle.  Nothing.  Shut down the computer and came back later, clicked around some more. Nothing.  So I gave up and thought of other things to keep busy and not think about writing because I can’t type when I can’t see what’s happening.  I stayed away for a long time.  And I didn’t want to try again tonight but I couldn’t come up with any excuses to not try.  So I did.  I began clicking on the teeny tiny buttons and links.

And I finally found my magic Enlargement key! (It’s that three bar thing in the upper right hand corner. I write this not for your benefit, but for mine, because I’m sure I’ll need it again and I’m sure I’ll forget where it is.)

It’s so good to be able to see what I’m typing!