Not wanting to spend too many waking hours on house chores, I've become more relaxed about farmhouse cleaning. Nevertheless, in addition to random spot tidying and bathroom polishing, every two weeks, I do a thorough top to bottom job. (With Ed as my vacuum cleaner.) Always on Sunday. It puts a good foot forward to the week ahead. It makes me feel orderly and in control.
And so it is that on a beautiful October morning, I do my duty to this old house and now I have the reward of enjoying its glitter and shine.
But that's not the end of it.
After breakfast -- where we did revel in the sunshine, albeit indoors...
...we head out and target the vegetable patch. Overgrown with weeds and spent tomatoes, peppers, peas, corn, brussel sprouts, cukes, and, to my shock -- eggplant (honestly? I planted eggplant? I completely forgot about it!) -- we have our fists full of stuff to dig out.
Dig, pull, shake off dirt, toss.
As I work up and down the strip of land, I'm thinking that winter is nature's gift to gardeners like us. I know how excited we get in February in picking seeds for the year. How easy it all seems then -- keeping tabs on the little seedlings, watering, watching, waiting. The plants grow, we put them into the ground, they bear fruits and veggies, some of them get to our table, many of them are eaten by the animals that pass this way (this year, we lost nearly all of our peas, brussel sprouts, strawberries, and grapes). We water, we harvest, and by the end of it all, we need a break!
It is wonderful to tidy things up in the garden, but it is even more wonderful to retreat home after and to put the plot out of our minds until... February.
And by the farmhouse, so long as the frost never quite takes hold, we sueely have the dash of color. Cosmos and beyond!
This evening, my girl and her husband are with us again for Sunday dinner.
...a good opportunity to make gnocchi, remembering the ones I ate in Italy, wishing I had their mushrooms here! Never mind, we have an abundance of market spinach. Yay spinach.
...and, too, I had picked the stragglers in the rhubarb patch -- enough for a rhubarb cake.
I think about how *homey* this day has been. My grandmother would be proud!
As for my writing (this in answer to a commenter) -- I did send out the requested text last week and now have several weeks of idle time, though I have the next half dozen agents to work with should this one, in the end, fizzle. It is daunting. One agent posts on her web page that she gets 250 queries per week. The one I'm currently working with posts that she responds to only 1% queries. The world is loaded with writers!
And you know what? I think that's a good thing!
And so it is that on a beautiful October morning, I do my duty to this old house and now I have the reward of enjoying its glitter and shine.
But that's not the end of it.
After breakfast -- where we did revel in the sunshine, albeit indoors...
...we head out and target the vegetable patch. Overgrown with weeds and spent tomatoes, peppers, peas, corn, brussel sprouts, cukes, and, to my shock -- eggplant (honestly? I planted eggplant? I completely forgot about it!) -- we have our fists full of stuff to dig out.
Dig, pull, shake off dirt, toss.
As I work up and down the strip of land, I'm thinking that winter is nature's gift to gardeners like us. I know how excited we get in February in picking seeds for the year. How easy it all seems then -- keeping tabs on the little seedlings, watering, watching, waiting. The plants grow, we put them into the ground, they bear fruits and veggies, some of them get to our table, many of them are eaten by the animals that pass this way (this year, we lost nearly all of our peas, brussel sprouts, strawberries, and grapes). We water, we harvest, and by the end of it all, we need a break!
It is wonderful to tidy things up in the garden, but it is even more wonderful to retreat home after and to put the plot out of our minds until... February.
And by the farmhouse, so long as the frost never quite takes hold, we sueely have the dash of color. Cosmos and beyond!
This evening, my girl and her husband are with us again for Sunday dinner.
...a good opportunity to make gnocchi, remembering the ones I ate in Italy, wishing I had their mushrooms here! Never mind, we have an abundance of market spinach. Yay spinach.
...and, too, I had picked the stragglers in the rhubarb patch -- enough for a rhubarb cake.
I think about how *homey* this day has been. My grandmother would be proud!
As for my writing (this in answer to a commenter) -- I did send out the requested text last week and now have several weeks of idle time, though I have the next half dozen agents to work with should this one, in the end, fizzle. It is daunting. One agent posts on her web page that she gets 250 queries per week. The one I'm currently working with posts that she responds to only 1% queries. The world is loaded with writers!
And you know what? I think that's a good thing!
Sometimes I just enjoy the parallels in our lives, and feel connected to you, and your good-natured commenters, and to everyone whose life centers around home and family. That's most folks, in all our different ways.
ReplyDeleteToday for us it was garden work, spinach lasagna, fresh apple cake, visit from son Mike and his dogs.
Sigh. Perfect day. Windows open throughout the evening, making the most of it before a week of rain ahead.
Btw, I, like you, feel very contented with a clean house. I used to be very "relaxed" about it, remembering my childhood friends' mothers who would fuss about "my clean floor!" Or even lock their kids out of the house.
I vowed never to be like that. I wrote a little poem titled "Priorities" and put in up in the front hallway. Kind of like "excuse the mess, but we don't care". Actually the boys were all taught "a place for everything and everything in its place" (that's from my grandmother). But during the daytime, works in progress often filled the house.
Now I like it uncluttered and I like to leave the house the way I want to see it when I return. I find simplicity very relaxing.
Just in time for the first grandchild with all the attending accoutrements & etc! No doubt I will shift my priorities once again.
Probably not, JoyD! I'm remembering what everyone tells me is a fundamental difference between being a parent and a grandparent: as a grandparent, you get to clean up after they leave and get a good night's rest!
DeleteAnd yes, these days when I write here, I look for the similarities and feel grateful when you, in your comments, find them.
I've never experienced rhubarb cake... Mother used to make rhubarb sauce but as children, we never appreciated it - not the same way we would love it now. I wonder if I could get P. to find rhubarb at the market on his shopping day?
ReplyDeleteLast chance! My garden has it and our market had it this weekend. Like raspberries, it will continue to produce until the first deep freeze!
DeleteMy home is always rather tidy. It's funny that just today I mentioned to my youngest son that my home was a tad messy, which means that a few things are not in heir usual designated places. It's just me. Not much to mess up. Easy to un-mess. Prior to my 2nd hip replacement, I engaged my housekeeper every week. Now I call her on an as-needed basis. She does such a crummy job of cleaning - awful. But I like her and I feel a strong and endearing loyalty to her. I really should call her more often. We're the same age. There's a kinship.
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess I'll go tidy up a bit. Then I think I'll call my housekeeper. I miss her. *laughing*
Oh, it would be like you to love a housekeeper for something other than her housecleaning!
DeleteAll my life I weighed getting help with cleaning against my ridiculous love of travel. When I came close to affording housecleaning help, I thought -- over a year, it's one more trip I could take. So I never in the end hired help. But I think it would be rather grand to leave a house messy and to reenter it in a spiffy shiny state. Maybe someday, when the lure of the far away places ceases to be so strong...
As you know, E and I indulge in hiring someone to clean for us, and because he is so particular, he finds good people and then trains them to do it the way he wants it. I love it!!
Delete