sitting

Play tennis? -- he asks at the usual hour.
I know he is tired, but he sees that I've been glued to the kitchen chair too long. But I'm not at a point where I can stop work.  
Maybe not today...Or should we?
You haven't moved your butt all day... He says this wanting to get me going.  But it's hopeless.
I'll make it up another time -- I say it without conviction.

So that's the low point -- when I cannot find time even for tennis.

Dinner: how do I treat dinner on these days when I can't seem to find the time to treat anything well?

Well now, I walk to the new orchard and vegetable patch, passing the increasingly solitary blooms...






The days are so much shorter! Long shadows on the fields to the north of us appear early. Too early.






I see that the animals have attacked our young fruit trees again. We haven't built the protective cages. We're paying the price for neglect.

Corn. There is still corn. (The only growing thing at the farmette, aside from trees, that's taller than Ed!)






And I do what I always do when I don't have time to think about food: I roast the vegetable du jour (today -- cauliflower), make a huge salad (one with plenty of tomatoes and cucumbers because we still have a daily supply from the garden)






...throw in those last few ears of corn, boil some eggs - not too long, just so,  and finally -- share a fresh panfried trout and some scraps of smoked salmon with Isis. It's come to that: I cook fish for the cat and then we steel some of it for our own supper.







And so the days hobble on and bleary eyed and somewhat drunk with work I tally forth. Round the clock.






Dinner then, breakfast now. On the porch. Cool (in the fifties), but with such good views toward a better world.


 



And the sun continues to taunt me -- you could be gardening! you need to help the new orchard! to fix the raspberry patch! Nagging thoughts, not much more than that.