17 Dec: weeding afternoon

Thursday, 17 December 2020

At home

I tried to tell myself that the weather was too cold and windy to go outside. Skooter certainly did not mind being indoors.

By early afternoon, I decided the guilt for being indoors reading was too strong and that I could at least dig some potatoes. It was garbage day. While bringing the wheelie bin in, I noticed a cute truck next door that deserved a photo…

…..and a Waterlogue treatment.

Front garden from the sidewalk

After digging potatoes and feeling cold, I warmed up enough to look around the garden. It’s in shades of brown and tan now.

seedheads of a tall achillea

center bed

The contorted filbert at the south end of the center bed is slowly losing its leaves.

The Bogsy Wood is living up to its name.

With the leaves fallen from the willows at the south end of the garden, I can see through to the port. Again, I pondered if in summer I might like a gate-shaped area of the willows to be pruned so one can see through, or would I rather be completely enclosed in summer?

Now I felt energized to weed for awhile and filled the smaller red wheelbarrow. Skooter joined me. He drank some rain water next to the raccoon scarer (it flashes blinking red light at night which is supposed to make them think there are predatory eyes)…

…and had much to say as he watched me weed.

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The weedy area from last time I was out:

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….and today.

The sun going down over the west hill at three thirty put an end to weeding.

I was pleased at having gotten some food from the garden in mid December.

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Chef Allan cooked the greens with tofu in a Thai peanut sauce, reminiscent of the “swimming angel” dish at a Thai restaurant where I frequently ate in the 1980s, and served some of the spuds as mashers. There is a kind of tofu that you can buy by mail order. Both Allan and I are enjoying the challenge of not shopping, and I imagine us not shopping until we are down to our last can of beans or spoonful of peanut butter. That doesn’t mean that if a local friend said they were going to the store and did I want something, I couldn’t come up with five things right away (plain yogurt, eggs, bananas and…and…). But it’s an adventure to not shop (made possible by mail order non-perishable groceries, including oat milk which is wonderful in cereal and coffee). I had fantasized that I was living without dairy (no milk or yogurt) until I remembered our mail ordered cheese.

Every day lately, Allan has been working on a kindle version of his boating book by taking basic maps and adding his own information to them. His 2021 edition of his book will have these maps, much better than the (credited) Google maps he was using before.

I got within 100 pages of finishing the Katharine Graham memoir and then it was time for our dinner and for watching Rachel Maddow, the Bake Off Master Class and The Repair Shop, followed by an episode of the short and very funny Derry Girls. (Dinner is at nine now instead of ten.)

I do believe the next few days will be proper reading weather.

Even though it would be satisfying to finish weeding in that section of the garden I’ve started, that weather prospect makes me very happy. This blog has entered its winter semi-hiatus; although I still find myself in the habit of almost daily blogging, it’s not on a particular time schedule anymore.