Category: Life

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Doors

The doors to our home

In the last year I realized that I write a lot about food. I do love to eat, doesn’t everyone? Well, Hubby says that not everyone loves to eat as much as I do.
Now surely there are people out there who enjoy a good ice cream? I had the best ice cream Sundae, in Berlin two years ago. It was so good! It was also Hubby’s birthday. You will notice that while everyone was having a healthful fruit Sundae, mine was chocolate! The next day Miss Greta came into our life.

I am not above making cupcakes for the pups on their birthdays. This was Fritz’s birthday last summer. You will notice that, although Shubi was not in good health then, she managed to jump up and attempt to snatch the cupcake away from her big brother.
I do, in fact, celebrate each of my fur children’s birthdays. Each gets a cupcake, and maybe a special meal and oh yes, a candle on the cupcake!

Living in New England, I often cook Lobster. It is one of my favorite meals. One time Hubby and his college roommate were away fishing. The night before he was to return I bought myself a 2 pound Lobster just for me. An hour before I was to cook that big boy, they called and said they were almost home and would be here for dinner! Do you know how difficult it was to find two other big Lobsters on short notice? In fact I could only get 2 one and one half pound Lobsters and my cover was blown!

I recently learned to make Baked French Onion Soup. It is now one of my signature dishes. I made it the other day and that was dinner. Both Hubby and I could live on the stuff!

This is tonight’s meal. Wiener Schnitzel, Asparagus and Potato Croquettes. Not bad for a first attempt. I still feel that I am missing a spice in the schnitzel breading.

Last but not least, I try to go to my favorite restaurant Canoe a couple of times a year for my favorite meal. A Jumbo Lobster Roll, Sweet Potato Fries and the most wonderful Dill Pickle!

I know I have made you all hungry, but it is the start of a holiday weekend and I wanted you primed to enjoy it. After all, here in America the Fourth of July is usually celebrated with a barbecue. I know that’s what we’ll be doing. In fact I bought Hubby a new charcoal barbecue grill for Father’s Day just so I know that for one day this year, he’ll be doing the cooking!

I’ve decided I like winter better.
In the winter I can wear flannel lined jeans and turtlenecks and big bulky sweaters and no one wonders what’s under all of these clothes. They just take it for granted that all the lumps and bumps are long underwear or some sort of layering for keeping warm.

If I’m having a bad hair day, I just pull a winter hat over my head. No one questions me about my big old Cat in the Hat cap, they figure I’m trying to keep my ears warm.
But in the summer, when it’s 90 degrees there isn’t much you can do to hide the sins of the supper table. They just sort of hang out there for all to see. Not to mention varicose veins, flapping middle aged arms and the notorious chicken neck!
And the hair? Yes, aside from just chopping it all off there is no place to hide that either. I have short hair anyway, so a baseball cap leaves it sticking out like Bozo the clown!
In the winter it’s so much easier to have good days, and if by chance I’m not, I can at least fool my mirror, and myself and hopefully most people I know with vision disabilities.

Since I believe in the ying and yang of life, the ups and the downs, and yesterday was a bit of a downer day for me, today will be an up day. Hmmmm, what to say, what to say?
Hubby has his staples out! Yes, and he did not fall apart so this is good news, very good news indeed!

He is still hobbling around on crutches and wants his meals served to him on a tray in his room, but I am personally suspicious that this is just a ploy on his part for attention.
In between meals he hobbles out into the yard to work on his fruit trees, pointing out where I over sprayed here, and under sprayed there. What he doesn’t know is, I have him now!
The next time we are due for spraying I intend to bring him out and make him do it! Oh and I’ll sit there and watch and say “helpful” things like “you missed a spot” or “a little more on the left”. Now that I’m an official sprayer I can offer these words of advise!
I was still worrying about him this morning. “How’s the pain?” I asked. He would put on that brave face, and tell me how he was getting by.
This afternoon I went outside to check on him while he was thinning peaches and asked how he was doing and would he like anything. He said a glass of ice cold white wine in a long stem wine glass would be nice.
Dream on, like that is going to happen! I did relent and brought him some wine, but in a cheapo glass that I would not miss if Fritz knocked it over and broke it.
He has since come back in and has retreated to his room where he is “King of the Remote Control” and his food and the beverage of his choice will magically appear…maybe.

If you think that fruit just grows on trees then you are 100% wrong! There is a lot of work that goes into growing good quality fruit. I know. Today I walked around and sprayed all our fruit trees to protect them against insects and fungus. We have various apple trees, peach trees, pear trees, plum trees and cherry trees.

Now if we were still a commercial operation we would have a tractor and a mechanical sprayer, but we are not. We are a small family of two with an acre of land with 35 fruit trees and grapes. What does this mean? It means that you use a hand held, hand pumped sprayer and that you carry it all the time you are spraying. I will tell you that 2 gallons gets pretty heavy!

After the back breaking work of digging the vegetable garden I thought I was pretty much off the hook for any more heavy work for the rest of the year. How wrong I was.

I do not say this often, but I miss all the work that Hubby does around here.

Shhhhh! Don’t tell him I told you that because he will never let me live that down. I am always complaining about how much I do and how he doesn’t do anything. I tell him that if he worked half as hard as I did he might actually appreciate me a little more. So it’s quite a shock to find myself in this position.

The thing is, he actually enjoys doing all the spraying and pruning and stuff to the trees. He thinks it’s relaxing. Ha! It’s not what I think is relaxing.
I think sitting by a pool of warm swimmable water, eating a frozen “Milky Way” candy bar is relaxing. Not spraying a bunch of fruit trees and sweating and getting all yicky.

No the water and the candy bar thing sound ever so much better!

The Lord has a sense of humor and I think he enjoys playing with my mind.

Yesterday I sat knitting again, day 2 since Hubby’s surgery. Click, click, click, went my needles. A mile a minute. I felt like I was making headway. Another foot and I would be done. I laid out my work to take a look and gasped! A three row mistake, about a foot and a half back! I tried to figure out a way to disguise it. Well, you can’t. There is was sticking out like a sore thumb! I debated. Do I leave it or do I rip out all of that hard work? Hubby and his visitor told me to leave it. No one would know.
I’d know.
I got out my book. My guide to beginners knitting. There it had pictures of how to thread a knitting needle in before you rip out your work, so you do not drop stitches. I worked carefully threading that needle in, and then, I ripped.
I felt like crying as I tore out all those hours of hard work. How could I have gone so wrong?
If my timing was correct, the mistake occurred when Hubby was in surgery. I was worried, I was upset. It’s his fault! If it wasn’t for his operation I would now be done with my project!
Hubby laughed and told me I should just have relaxed and not worried. Then all would have gone well. I should have had some faith.

Yes, the Lord has a sense of humor and I think he is amused.

How does your garden grow…
We finished the garden at 7:43 Monday night. All cleared, fertilized and planted! Yahoo!!!!!! These last few days I have worked harder on this garden than I have, since giving birth!! I still need to run my twine for the Pea plants to climb, but that’s a 15-20 minute job before we leave at 2 on Tuesday. Here are a few pictures of our garden!

After getting it all cleared.

After the planting!
I want to let you all know that although I will try to write each day while Hubby is in the hospital, I probably won’t be able to comment at your sites until I come back home. See you soon!

When I was young an innocent (?) I believed that I wanted nothing more than a house in New Hampshire, with fruit trees and a vegetable garden. Ah, how lovely it would be to grow ones own fruit and vegetables. Mother Nature would have nothing on me. I would be one with the earth. (Insert a deep, happy sigh and blue grass music.)

Fast forward 20 years. I have my lovely home in New Hampshire, and fruit trees around us that Hubby has cultivated. This year, yes this year would be the year I would finally have my vegetable garden. Over a month ago I started my seedlings. I carefully watered them and talked to them and I felt a true peace inside. This would be good.

Then yesterday, knowing that our time was slipping away, we knew we had to lay out the garden and dig it. Since math has never been my subject, I let Hubby figure out dimensions. He mowed the area down very short and we began.

I must tell you that after the first half an hour, I had decided that having a garden was stupid and I simply should chuck the seeds and go to the grocery store! However, I resolved not to wimp out. Hubby would dig up the sod and I would cut it and shake out the dirt. We worked from 10 AM until after 5 PM, stopping to have a quick lunch in the middle. By 5 I was aching and sun burnt, and tired like you would not believe!

We came into the house and took showers, and then got into the jacuzzi. I soaked for a while, but then decided I should get out before I fell asleep and drowned! I got out and lay down on our bed in front of the air conditioner. Tired, aching and pink. No, make that red.

Hubby came into the room and asked innocently, “What’s for dinner?”
“Reservations”, I replied.

I fell asleep at 9:30 last night and slept until Hubby woke me at 7:30 this morning. Still tired, still sore and yes, still sunburnt. After making a Recycling Center run, we were back out in the garden working. We are probably 2/3 of the way through, but don’t ask me for a real percentage here, because like I’ve said, math isn’t my thing. I think on Monday we’ll be able to get the garden completed, but I give you no promises here.

I may yet give up my title as Mother Earth 2!

I like to believe that I’m still really, very young. I feel young. I believe I have youthful, hip ideas about life. Most of the time when I look in the mirror I still see that 19 year old wrinkle free girl that I once was.
But lately, I’m finding that there are little things happening to me, that confirm something I’ve been denying. I am in fact, getting old.
It started harmlessly enough. First I had these gray hairs that began to appear. I told myself I was simply “prematurely” gray. A little dye job and no one was the wiser.
Then I noticed a few little tiny lines. Mostly around the eyes. Okay, those are “smile” lines. They just mean I’m a happy person. Not old!
But then I did something the other day that made me stop, sit down and finally admit that, yes, I am indeed getting old.
I was sitting typing on the laptop. I’d taken off my glasses because I cannot see the screen with them on. I typed and typed, and then got up to go into the office to print something. I reached over to the table for my glasses. They weren’t there. Okay, maybe I’d taken them off in the kitchen. I got up and walked over to the kitchen. I looked all around the kitchen, which in fact is quite a feat because I am blind as a bat without my glasses. I went into the bedroom and looked there. Nothing.
I gave up and went into the office and started the print job I needed to do. All the while wondering what I’d done with my glasses. Just then, I felt something like a tick on my hair and reached up and, yes, you guessed it, there were my glasses on top of my head where they had been all along.
Now it’s not easy to admit that I am suddenly a middle aged scatterbrained woman. I don’t feel old. Really, I don’t, but there are these little things that tell me that when you hit menopause you lose more than your ability to procreate!

It’s a little known fact that I maintain my house for the comfort of my dogs. I say little known, because it’s a big world and I expect there are still a few people out there who are unenlightened. Even Hubby, when we were first married, didn’t know the depth to which I spoiled my fur babies.
With cats it’s easy to explain to people why they sleep with you. Cats are sneaky. They wait until you’re asleep and then they slowly crawl, undetected into your bed. You have no choice in the matter. They just help themselves to your bed!
Dogs, however, are a little different.
When we got Shubi as a baby, I immediately brought her into bed with me.
“No”, Hubby said, “She sleeps on the floor in the basket.
At the time we were at our friends in Germany, so Shubi still had her brother to sleep with, so she was fine in the basket, but when we got her home to the USA Hubby tried to place her on the floor to sleep. He turned out the lights. A little puppy cry started. She was scared, she was tired, but so was Hubby.
“Okay” he said, “Just for tonight”.
Shubi remained in our bed for the rest of her life.
When Fritz arrived from Oregon, he was tired, I was tired and so was Hubby.
“We’ll just bring him into the bed with us”, I said.
So I got the little puppy and brought him into bed with Hubby, Shubi and me. I turned out the light. Fritz jumped around and the next thing I knew, he wee-wee’d in the bed! I leapt up, grabbing the sheets and blankets, and all but rolled Hubby and Shubi onto the floor in my attempt to keep the wee-wee from getting into the mattress!
As I changed the sheets, the sweet little white puppy got put into a crate and closed in the living room for the night.
He has never been invited back into our bed, although I do allow him to sleep on the floor in our room.
Enter Greta.
Once again Hubby felt it was better not to bring the puppy into the bed. After all, look what happened with Fritz! I would not be dissuaded, and Greta came to bed with us. The two dachshunds curled up together and fell asleep. Greta, remains a permanent bed fixture to this day.
The other day, Hubby observed Fritz on the sofa asleep. He went over to sit and pat him and before he knew what was happening, he had a lap full of dogs. I grabbed the camera and snapped this picture.

Yes, this house is maintained for the comfort of all my dogs!