A Small Moment

Headed for the Justice Bus

Small interactions. Sometimes that is all it takes.

I dictated this into Notes on my phone (one app I do use sometimes) this morning and thought I'd send it out into the world tonight.

I was at the Law Library early this morning because it was our monthly Justice Bus (a family law Clinic) and Judy, our librarian, had to go to the dentist. I wanted to be there to make sure we were ready for clients and our volunteer attorneys in another hour.  While I was waiting and walking around, the employee who cleans the building came through and I offered her a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie that I had baked last night to go with our hot sandwiches.

She was delighted. She took the cookie, did her work in the library, and started to leave. I was just walking into the main library lobby when she turned, came back, and asked me if she could ask me a question.

I told her I didn’t know if I could answer it, but I would do my best. Her question turned out to be one I could answer. A close friend had just lost her husband and the woman asked me about local probate attorneys. 

I lit up. Probate! We have a Probate Help Desk in this county, run through Andrews House and funded by our Probate Court. I told her how to reach the program (call Andrews House) and that the Probate Help Desk would allow her friend to get a free one-hour consultation by a vetted probate attorney. That consultation would give the friend information to make some decisions, including whether she needed an attorney. I wrote down the phone number for Andrews House and handed it over,  As she left, she thanked me. Her face was lit up with how she could help her friend.

After she left, I thought: this is what community is about. This is what mending the broken world, Tikkun olam, is all about. This is what we do here at the local level to help our community, regardless of faith, politics, income, race, gender identification, or primary language, to help our community.

Yom Kippur is ending here in Ohio in about, oh, guessing by looking our my west study window, about 30 minutes. That brings to a close the High Holy Days, during which Jews often focus on how they can be better going forward into the New Year. I did not observe Yom Kippur in more traditional ways (and I am exempt from fasting because of my health), but this felt to me like a superb way to bring the High Holy Days to a close.

It was a great start to my day.

After Three

The 3rd quarter of the year ends today and, knowing that we are not buying groceries until later this week, I am running the numbers on what we spent and thinking ahead to the final three months of the year. After I posted our 2nd quarter numbers back in early July, I noted that I was hoping to hold to $200/month, but wasn't sure we would be able, given the economy. 

It is always nice to be surprised. Positively, I mean.

For the months of July, August, and September, we spent a total of $595.18, which comes to an average of $198.39 a month. Of that amount, only $18.92 was spent on household items such as aluminum foil. The rest was all food. All. Food. 

[NOTE: The main reason our household expenses is so low is that we pay nothing (as in $0.00) or next to nothing for dish soap and laundry detergent by using cash "rewards" I get from CVS. My father's meds are filled there, credited to my Rewards account, so I get those household items when CVS runs a sale.]

In September, we did two "replenish the pantry" shoppings, one at Aldi and one at our local Walmart. I had comparison-shopped online first, and so had a specific list of items that Walmart had lower prices on than Aldi, anywhere from 10 cents or more (up to about 20 cents). Warren and I compared impressions afterwards. We agreed that Walmart is more stressful, packing is way harder using our own bags, and there was less selection; our local WM is small and does not have a full-fledged grocery store. I think, looking ahead to October, we will do our larger stock up shopping at Aldi: better selection on many items. Not to say I won't check prices, but for what we are likely to be buying this month, it will be Aldi with some fill-ins from Kroger (a butter sale this weekend!) and Walmart.

For 2025, with 9 months behind us, our average monthly grocery spending comes to $195.58. If we can hold our monthly spending to about $200.00/month through year's end, we will come in for 2025 at an overall $200/month average. Given these times, I will gladly take it. 

I recently did a freezer inventory to see where we stand for the winter. I will be sharing that in another post, but let me just say that it was encouraging. Especially looking at that $200/month goal.

Onward! 

Apples

Coming in the next five years

We recently made a rocket trip to Rochester, Minnesota, for a routine check-in with my specialist there. Mayo Clinic is in the early years of a five BILLION dollar expansion, with targeted completion in 2030, and when it is finished, my beloved Mayo will look even more like the Emerald City of Oz. 

Despite the rush of the trip (it was hemmed in by Warren's classes, medical tests here, rehearsals, and more), we nonetheless fit in a stop that I have dreamed about for years.

Years. 

Decorah, Iowa is about 72 miles south of Rochester, Minnesota on US 52. Decorah is a small community (about 8000) with a private college in the town. We weren't there for the college. No, we were there to stop at and explore Seed Savers Exchange, a non-profit organization that, per its website, is "the nation’s largest nongovernmental seed bank of its kind (some 20,000 varieties) at Heritage Farm" (which is where we were). 

I was not disappointed.

The Exchange encompasses about 890 acres, some of it in pasture, some of it in orchards, some of it in experimental gardens (experimental in that they are testing the viability of old, old (literally or figuratively) seeds). 

Okay, I splurged at the Visitors Center. (Yes, I know: "splurge" is a word I never use.) Some seeds for us, some seeds for friends, a Seed Savers T-shirt, and an etched small gourd ornament for our Christmas tree. (The ornament, unfortunately, was lost somewhere between Rochester and our home.) We wandered through some of the experimental gardens; these zinnias were part of that:

And then we went to the Historic Orchard.

Oh my. 

At the Historic Orchard (one of two orchards on the property), the apples date back into the 1800s. Visitors are allowed to pick up to five gallons of apples for free. We were the only visitors in the orchard, and Warren and I wandered through, both gaping at the assortments and picking various ones to carry back with us to Ohio. You would come across a tree maybe only five feet tall, bent over with apples, and then turn to see a much taller one of a different variety.

One of the smaller trees; I could pick from its very top.

In the end, we picked a tote bag full and put it in the car to carry them home:

Our haul! 

The next day at Mayo, we shared a meal with dear friends who drove down from Minneapolis to spend a few hours with us. While we laughed and talked in the Eisenberg Cafeteria (truly the best food in downtown Rochester, and there is great food in Rochester), a woman came up to our table. We had been talking politics, and I thought maybe we were too loud and she wanted to comment.

Not at all. She pointed to my Seed Savers t-shirt and asked me if I had been there. 

I beamed. "Yes! We were just there yesterday! It's amazing!" 

She asked more questions: How far away is it? Was it easy to get to from Rochester?

With every answer, the smile on her face grew wider.

She had to be in Rochester for the next two months for treatment. Before that started, while she could still get out and about, she wanted to go to Seed Savers Exchange.

She then posed her own question.

"Do you know they partner with Svalbard?" 

I nodded; yes, I knew that.

"I was at Svalbard this summer," she added.

Now it was my time to ask questions. Svalbard! What took her to Svalbard? Was she visiting? Was this a tourist trip? 

No, she had worked there this summer. We all stared at her. She smiled and added, "I only work above 61 degrees or below 61 degrees." 

While we puzzled out that answer, she laughed and explained: "I'm a polar scientist."

Only at Mayo can you be eating lunch in the hospital cafeteria and have a polar scientist come up to to you and start chatting. I hope she made it to Decorah.

We drove 11 hours the next day, Tuesday, to get back to Delaware, and we made it in good spirits. After an evening of only necessary tasks and a morning of catching up (the laundry, the mail, checking in with my dad), I turned my attention Wednesday afternoon to the historic apples.

Apples.

Lots of apples. 

A sink full of apples

Apples with textures and colors and tastes that I have never seen, let alone held, peeled, and tasted. These apples predate the "modern" varieties of the 1900s, let about those apples of the current century. Some were the size of a child's fist. Some had green flesh beneath the peel. Some had orangish flesh. Some were truly snowy white. 

Nearing the end of the apples

It was exhausting. It was amazing. 

The long view

The kitchen was full of the smell of apples. My fingertips were stained a light orange/red from peeling so many apples. After it was all over, I had six quarts of peeled and sliced apples, labeled "Ancients," in bags in the freezer. 

I penned this out last night and am typing it in this afternoon. While I wrote, Warren was an hour away in Mansfield as the Mansfield Symphony opened its 105th season. (Warren has played with it for 45 years of that 105-long year run!) I no longer go with him on performance day, as the afternoon rehearsal and evening concert make for a 11+ hour day, beyond my capacity, but I went up with him for the Friday night rehearsal. Given our week of travel and appointments and labs and scans and family matters, let alone the apples, even "just" going up for the rehearsal was about the limit of my energy, but I did it with love and delight.

And, by golly, we have apples. I swear there is still a faint tinge of apples in the air of our home. 

And that, my friends, is a gift. 

Notes on Small Things

More time for this?

When our neighbors Mark and Mary go out of town, I feed and check on their cat, Sammie. Mary and I were talking this afternoon and, as they are going out of town later this month and then again in November, I wanted to get those dates on my calendar.

I still use a paper calendar. Two, actually: a large one that I keep on the kitchen table, and a small one (a very small one) that I carry with me. Our events and activities and appointments are color-coded: Warren sky blue, me pink, and joint appointments/events a mild green. I make sure that what goes on one calendar goes on the other.

Mary goggled at my calendar. She asked the obvious: "Why don't you keep your calendar on your phone?" 

"Because I don't want to be tethered to it to any greater degree than I am already."

She laughed, then gaped when I opened my calendar to this month and she saw pink after pink after pink.

"I want less pink on my calendar," I announced. 

Mary got me immediately.

These have been hard, overloaded days—yet, still, whatever. Medical appointments have taken a chunk of days with more to come through next week. So has taking care of things for my dad. like picking up and delivering prescriptions or toothpaste or...yeah. I don't note Dad-types of things on the calendars unless they are an outside appointment. If I did, because I have started using orange for him, my calendar would be a patchwork of orange and pink. Not good.

I am picking up some online continuing legal education credits this month; those are on there. Not on the calendar but a constant: housework, our own local errands, the library.

You get the picture.

As we ate supper out on our deck tonight, I told Warren I was not unhappy, but I am worn out. (Add to that exhaustion our both getting our 25-26 Covid and our Fall 2025 flu vaccines yesterday.)

In short, t.i.r.e.d.

"And I am not making time for things I want to do, like write or take pictures," I said. "Look at that bee in the petunias. I mean that kind of thing." 

Warren came up with a practical observation, as he often does. Had I taken care of the things I absolutely had to get done today? Yes? Then let's get the dishes done (he washes, I dry), and then go write. Or read. Or...you get the idea. 

I just penned these lines out while sitting in our living room, then came upstairs to type them in. Absolutely it feels good.

My friend Katrina recently wrote that she noticed my blog has been focusing on small things, and the comfort that seems to bring me. She encouraged me to continue to keep that focus, as it would help me to get through some of everything going on.

As I finish these lines, I can hear the crickets through the open window and even catch a katydid or two piping up. 

And that is enough for now. 

Skyward

Photo by Samuele Bertoli on Unsplash

Yesterday started very early. I had a 7 a.m. appointment in Columbus with my oncologist, which meant getting up at 5:30 to be on the road by 6:15.  I dressed and headed downstairs to the kitchen. Waiting for Warren to come down, I stepped out on our back deck to see how much the temperature had dropped overnight. It was still dark with no hint of sunrise, so I looked up to see if there were any stars visible.

There were stars and there was Orion, hanging in the northeast sky, brilliantly lit. It was my first fall sighting of it.

Orion is my favorite constellation. Robert Frost put Orion in his poem "The Star-splitter," which has been a longtime treasured poem in my mental poetry collection: "You know Orion always comes up sideways..." Orion is one of the very few constellations I can readily identify, which is certainly a part of why it is my favorite. And way back in my misty past, I first saw and had someone identify Orion in a brilliantly dark Wisconsin night sky, seeing it from the outside walk surrounding the telescope dome at Yerkes Observatory. That first view of Orion, of knowing what I was looking at, has stuck with me.

I called Warren outside to see Orion and we both marveled at the sky. Then we went on with our morning.

The time came for Warren to head to class, I walked outside with him to give him a kiss and wave goodbye; both are important to us. When I turned to go back into the house, I noticed a moth resting on the lintel between the storm door and the house door. It must have fluttered on it when we stepped out. I opened the storm door wider: "Go on, little moth. You don't need to be in our house." 

It was then that I noticed that one of the moth's wings was badly damaged, almost as if something had bit a chunk out of it. 

Oh. I figured I would have to pick it up and set it on a bush.

The moth had other ideas. When I bent closer, it fluttered up off the lintel and flew into the front yard, heading towards one of the flower beds. True, it flew in a jagged, erratic fashion, but fly it did. 

That moth made an impression on me. "That's me," I thought. Or rather, I hoped that was me: yes, damaged but still able to move forward. Maybe jagged and erratic at times, but still going.

Orion in the morning and a moth giving me a lesson in flying midday. And all I had to do was look up.

This Year's Gardens: Chapter 10

Zinnia

Blogger friend Sam, who blogs at Sam Squared, recently had a post titled "End of Summer Juggle." I was so tired that when I saw the title, I read it as "End of Summer Jungle," and laughed at myself for mixing my garden thoughts with her summer thoughts.

Our Kitchen Garden IS a jungle. Between the cherry tomatoes gone wild, the cosmos gone wild, the agastache gone wild, and the zinnias gone wild, it is a thicket of stems and branches and bees and butterflies and even an occasional hummingbird. Earlier this week, I waded (the only verb that fits) into the thick of it, garden snips in hand, and cut a lot of tomato stems and branches off. Remember that scene in the movie Hook where one of the Lost Boys keep smoothing out the wrinkles on Peter Pan's face (played brilliantly by the late, great Robin Williams) and then announces, "Oh, there you are, Peter!" That's how I felt after some ten minutes: "Oh, there you are, garden!"

Late yesterday afternoon, Warren was in the dogleg of our backyard, where he had built a large storage shed for his business and for yard equipment like the tiller and mowers. As he and we continue to move into the next phase of our lives, he has been working in the shed to rearrange, cull through, and move various tools and materials. I came out to keep him company and sat there for some time, then announced I was getting my work gloves and be back. Five minutes later, I was taking apart the fence surrounding the Hej Garden. I realized several weeks ago that the time for me to operate this second garden, even though it is "right there," has come and gone. So slowly I unwound the fence and pulled up the support stakes.

Dave, whose yard contains that garden, came out and chatted a few minutes. I told him this was the last year I was gardening here; that Warren would till it later this fall and we'd seed it, but our gardening days were over. He nodded; they had gardened there the first year or two after they bought the house, but, as Dave noted, laughing, "with all of our activities, gardening, though enjoyable, was low on the priority list."

The site formerly known as the Hej Garden. 

So the Hej Garden is down and done. As a final fitting note, just know that the fat, happy groundhog who lives under a large brush pile on Adam and Maura's property just feet away from the north end of the Hej Garden breached the garden fence and ate BOTH of the remaining two red cabbages before I could cut them and make more slaw. 

The fencing that did not stop the groundhog

Even though I have been gardening for years, every year I learn new things about spacing and grouping, and this year was no exception. I am already making notes (both mental and actual) about next year's gardens, both vegetable and flower. The biggest change coming to the Kitchen Garden will be moving the agastache, which has flourished there, to the flower bed down near the pine trees, which we plan on expanding (all perennials). We love the agastache, but it takes up more room each year. Along with moving it out, I will not be sowing the kitchen garden with cosmos, but instead will sow the small bed immediately behind the house. Cosmos are beautiful and bright, but I want the room they take up. And, in a surprise to myself, it turns out that I love zinnias and will seed a row of them along the very back of the kitchen garden, against the outside garage wall. The ones I sowed this year were in a packet sent to my father from the Alzheimer's Association and the results were tall and colorful and made me smile.

As for next year's planting in the Kitchen Garden, I learned that I had been stunting the peppers' growth by having them too crowded and, wait for it, too shaded by the tomatoes all these years. This year, the peppers got the south side of the garden, and except for the two unfortunates closest to the cosmos/tomato jungle, the peppers have been having a pepper party!

Some of the peppers, ready for their closeup 

There should be weeks yet of tomatoes and peppers. The basil is growing beautifully still and while I am leaning towards letting it flower for the bees, I may do one more small harvest to dry the leaves for seasoning. My neighbor Mary was taken aback when I told her my plans to let it flower. "But it gets bitter then!" "But the bees love it," I replied, and I told her how I liked to think of the bees wintering over with their hive smelling like basil. Mary smiled; so that's why I was thinking that! 

Summer is winding down. But the bees and the flowers and the Kitchen Garden are still going strong. I look forward to seeing what the next month brings. 

More Small Things

Peppers, peppers, peppers! 

Right now, small things continue to work the best for me in moving through these days. When other matters become too much to work with, I can always turn to small tasks and find focus and satisfaction. 

Here is another handful of small things. 

This year, we have a pepper harvest to beat any prior pepper harvest (and there is more harvest to come). So after picking (not a peck of pickled peppers) peppers, I decided to make onion/pepper relish (hot bath canning only):

Preparing the relish

And done!

More got cut up and put in the freezer:

Cutting!

And ready for the freezer! 

And some ended up on our supper tables, sliced open, cleaned, and filed with mozzarella cheese:

Ready to prep for supper

Yes, they were delicious! 

Our hot weather finally broke (and hoping beyond hope it stays broke), so last evening I thought "Why not bake some cookies?"

So I did:

Getting ready to start mixing

And done!

They too are delicious!

Even the laundry is satisfying:

Socks socks socks

In the evenings, if Warren is working on business or class, I try to spend my time reading (current read is The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James) or writing letters. 

I know: Just small tasks. Just little things. But right now, it is these little things that help me make sense of my days. And that is more than enough.