Putting to Bed the Season

I'm feeling broody. I get this way sometimes, and I think it's a good thing. I look out over my garden and see that it's ready for me to take out the spent plants, rake the soil, and cover it for the Winter months to come. It makes me sad. I get this way too at the ends of seasons--one good thing coming to a close. I want to hold on. Holding on is not healthy. I want to learn to let go with grace. Put the season to bed. Prepare myself for the season to come. Celebrate the season to come. (And plan for the garden season next year. :) ).

I love Fall! I love the turn of the leaves into their crimson, yellow and orange finery twirling to the earth covering the ground with a carpet, as they and the trees prepare for their next season. I love crisp apples, college football games ( for my alma mater). The nip of a chill on my nose! Pumpkins, cider, little children dressed as Princesses and Super Heroes, about all I like about Halloween. Then my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. A time of quiet reflection with my family and loved ones gathered around me. Being Grateful, what a wonderful thing to celebrate. Which leads right to Christmas, the celebration of the Birth of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yes, it's a wonderful season ahead! I look forward to it. I will get out my Winter things; library books, making of all things sparkly with my beads, for my friends and loved ones. Making cards. If I am efficient maybe I'll make my Christmas cards. I think I will. I have so many stamps and inks to stamp with. Punches, stickers, papers, ribbon, buttons and beads to fuel my imagination. Does it really mean you're an 'Old Lady' to 'Craft' for people? Two words that are heavy with stereotyping. Is crocheting and knitting booties and things for grandchildren and any children, and cancer caps for hospitals, or fun things for me and friends, does that run you to the side of the road, or do some people have blinders on? I don't know.

Well my friends and I will huddle up this fall and winter and play. 'Crafting' with love and pizazz.! What a wonderful part of a season! So yes, I am longing to hold on to my Spring and Summer, but my garden says it is the season to prepare to rest and celebrate the things of the seasons of Fall and Winter now.

A longing. A brief sadness. A long letting go. And a looking forward.

Drowsy Harvest Days

Everything is winding down in my garden. I have a couple of squash left, some cucumbers, green peppers, and the last of my tomatoes blushing then turning that thrilling deep red. There is a drowsiness in the air, which is Fall, which I love. My neighbor (another neighbor) helped me make meals for the freezer, and we used a pepper and some green onions. I feel proud that we are eating up my produce. And I've been sharing, that feels good to.

Time to cover my garden to get it ready for it's winter's sleep. My neighbor and I were looking at my garden yesterday and talking about what to plant next year. It's a gardener's mindset.

As for my herbs. . .they are coming in for the winter! I'm working on a whole shelf of herbs! And I got an unfinished peg board with a shelf on top to show off pictures of. . . the garden??? Now don't think of me as the 'cat lady' of gardens. I just need something to nurture. I nurture just about anything that comes to hand! Isn't finding something or someone to care for the best way to live? I think so.

On my short list of projects--painting my peg board, shelf.

Fall is good.

Garden Bliss

I have Zucchini, crookneck squash, cucumbers and almost ripe tomatoes. How did that happen?!

Well of course I know how that happened. The season has turned and it is nigh on harvest time.

I was talking to my neighbor, when we were musing on planting our starts just before Spring, and he said I could plant a batch of lettuce in the Spring and then again in August. August! That is so far away—it would never come! Now it's here! The first batch of lettuce has bolted. (I like to tell my husband that because it is garden speak for 'gone to seed'. I never know what engineer speak is for anything!) And soon I will be picking everything I planted and trying to find good ways to eat it up—I always plant too much. I love watching it grow so much!  Sharing is good--like we learned in kindergarten. Everything You Need to Know You Learned in Kindergargen, like the title of that book says?  I think that's the best way to live.

I have been growing herbs and learning how to use them as well. I am working on getting them dried. Everything is going so fast!  How do I hold on?

Just enjoy the ride?

Technology!

Technology!

My music is floating somewhere in cyber-space. My pictures are living in the ether-net. My husband, bless his heart ( my Southern neighbor says that you can say anything about anybody if you say "Bless their heart", even that the neighbor is having an affair with another neighbor. My husband is not having an affair with the neighbor, that's not his style, but he just doesn't have time to find all my things and put them in a place I could find them.) Anyway, if he did, I wouldn't know how to get them out of the computer, or remember where they were.

Example: Someone hacked into my Facebook account and sent all my friends a fake message from me that ended up to be a whole lot of junk mail. The nerve of some people! What is this world coming too? So I thought I would be smart and get an e wallet or vault to put all my new passwords in. My husband helped me set it up. Bless His Heart! He's got a full time job with me. But then when something asked me for a password I had forgotten the password to open my wallet! My husband spent a lot of time thinking of ways to hack my wallet, since every password had been changed, and of course I couldn't remember what they were, bless my heart! Then three days later I was just sitting in the quiet, and the password for my wallet came back into my mind. (There is a lesson there.)

So—when my husband was reading to me from his phone and it froze up. (hee, hee, hee, hee, hee. . .) he huffed and said "technology". Yes, 'Hecknology', I said. It is always 'heck'nology to me.

It's a paradox

Yes, I realize that it's a paradox to rage against technology by using technology.  I like a good paradox.  And with my husband, son, son-in-law, sister and friends holding my hands, I think I can write a blog.  I will probably have quite a few tantrums, I'll have to because technology is out to get me, no joke!  But I think I'll learn. In my blog I can ponder, reflect,  rejoice, maybe sometimes whine. 1may rage, though that's really not my style, unless we're talking technology.  At least it'll be an adventure! My life's full of adventures.  At least it's not boring!

My men loooove technology. It's their profession. It's their leisure. They understand every little bit and byte. They take devices apart and put them back together again. When a new gadget comes out, they know exactly what makes it new, and what has changed to make it bigger (or smaller), better, and why they need it. I know I am blessed and have many wonderful gadgets that my husband has given me to make my life easier, more comfortable and all around more wonderful. I know I have many toys that other people (particularly men--though that is an utterly sexist comment and I know it!) anyway, other people drool over and covet. But technology does not work as slickly for me. It swallows whole my writings, deletes entire emails, and refuses to let me IM my family. I'm baffled by YouTube, totally lost in Facebook, and am sure some lunatic is going to stalk me. I can take pictures, but not upload them, or move them around, and definitely not edit them! And the lovely music I can have access to, from everywhere (?), and the audio books, all paid for, exist in cyberspace for me. I hate cyberspace! What is it, where is it, and how do I keep from being sucked up into it myself. It's the image from the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey when the computer kicks the man out of the spaceship and leaves him floating alone in outer space. That's the scariest movie ever made! These wondrous, earth shattering gadgets that define our future just shut down at my touch. I am being left behind which makes me cranky!

So I started this blog, admittedly with the help of my husband, sister, and son-in-law to rage against technology and the future that I am being dragged into kicking and screaming! I rage, because I can. And when I put my username and password in my vault, all I have to do is remember my vault combination, and I can blog!

I may write about other things, too. Like:

The Joy of Grandchildren.

The Delight and Grieving of Growing Things.

The Thrill and Mourning of the death of Live Arts.

Of Bits and Bobs of Paper and String and Sparkly Things.

An Eclectic Smattering that is me.