October 27, 2021

It has been cold enough the last couple of days that I turned on the electric heater, one that’s disguised as a fireplace, which sits in my office. This room where I spend the better part of my day has two of its four walls as “outside” walls. This is an old house, more than a century old, and it has no proper insulation in these walls.

Even in the dead of winter it’s not usually too cold in my office. However, from mid September until May on any given day when there is a wind out of the north or north-east, that wind manages to penetrate the combination of plaster, lathing and aluminum siding.

While the “fireplace” that surrounds the heater is of a good size (standing about 4 feet tall and with a 14-inch-wide mantel on top), the heater itself is not very big. That’s okay, because this isn’t a big office, either. And I find that if I turn on my tower fan, and have it blow gently across the front of the fireplace where the heat comes out, well, the whole room warms up fairly quickly and fairly well. After an hour I generally turn the thing off, and remain comfortable for quite some time.

Outside my window, from what I can see of the outside around my very larger computer monitor, there are wet leaves everywhere. Some are still attached to the walnut tree, just waiting for us to clean up the ones already on the ground before they fall. However, the good news is that there are no more walnuts left to come down. Our daughter has gone back to parking in front of the house, because it has been cold and raining a great deal the last few days, and who wants to walk an extra half block in those conditions, when its not necessary?

Her diligence paid off and no falling walnuts landed on her brand new, pristine Ford Edge Titanium during the blessedly short season of nut-drop, so that’s something.

Because our daughter changed her eating habits and become vegan (well, she’s Vegan except for eating eggs and drinking milk) I am always looking for things I can make that she will enjoy. It’s been nine months now since she said goodbye to meat. Within two months of that change in diet, she was at the point where, if she accidentally ingested some beef grease—as happened once when she ordered a veggie burger at a burger place and they weren’t careful enough to cook it away from beef—then the result was she would feel sick pretty much for the rest of the night. She says she does feel better, overall, since she made the change in her diet. Our daughter is a very practical soul and will opt for the logical over the emotional every time.

I made a homemade vegetable soup on the weekend, which was a new soup to me, and it worked out well because it was gobbled down quickly. And then on Monday I made “meatloaf”, which seems to be this family’s favorite comfort food. Actually, I made two meatloaves. One for David and me with actual hamburger, and one for our daughter which had plant based “impossible burger” in it. Whenever I am preparing meat and meatless at the same time, I’m careful to use separate utensils so there is no cross contamination of the two. I do add the same nonmeat ingredients to her meat loaf as to I do to ours simply because when she was eating meat she really loved my meatloaf. She says hers is very good, and David loved the one I made for the two of us, so that was a success, overall. We have packages of mushroom gravy mix on hand now, because there are no meat products or by products in them, and it’s a gravy both daughter and daddy like.

It remains one of my purest pleasures in this life to cook food that my family loves to eat.

Sometimes, when I make supper, our daughter doesn’t want any of the several “plant based meat” she has on hand. So instead of one veggie with the potatoes or rice or pasta, I’ll make two veggies. These are on days when our daughter would have had an egg for breakfast or lunch, so it’s not a case of protein depravation for her. And she certainly doesn’t mind sharing the table with us when we do have meat. Now that I have a few dishes that I can make that we all three like that are meatless, supper time has smoothed out some for me. Of course, I can’t help but worry that our daughter may not be taking in enough protein. I just have to remind myself that she is a grown woman, and capable of monitoring that on her own.

As I look out at today’s somewhat pale dawn, I’m reminded that it's that time of year that tends to be wet and intermittently cold, when leaves litter the ground, covering grass and sidewalk, and what plants remain in the flower beds begin to die off.

It’s a time of transition, and a time when I become very conscious that life never really stays static for long. Everything always comes to pass.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 October 20, 2021

As October continues to play out, we have begun our seasonal chores for autumn. This past week, David spent the first of what I am certain will be several afternoons blowing and then bagging leaves. He exchanged the “summer porch furniture” for the fall and winter set. He also removed the covering he had on our porch floor this year—artificial grass. I didn’t care for that myself, but the porch is very rough concrete, and since we often have kids on it, we thought it might be a good idea to have something there. Along with the chairs, in the spring and summer our porch also has what looks like a doll bed, but which our daughter’s dogs use as their own porch chair. But only in the good weather, and she bought it because her dogs eschew laying on floors of any kind.

Sometimes it’s just my daughter and my husband doing the bulk of the outside work. And sometimes, as they did last evening, they have helpers.

Yesterday, being Tuesday, was the day that our daughter has her two grandchildren come for a while, after school. They stay for supper, and then she takes them home just before eight. And yesterday, we had an extra little one here, her great-niece and the youngest of our four great-grandchildren.

So yes, we did indeed have three little ones aged 8, 7 and 2 and a half with us yesterday. I love them, of course. I’m grateful that I get to see the three of them as often as I do. Being a great-grandparent isn’t as clear-cut a position as that of being a grandparent was. We are one step back from our previous role, and that is probably good for us, because we are that much older now, with that much less energy than fifteen years ago, when we helped care for our two youngest grandchildren.

Our second daughter worried some about us, when we had her two children here quite often while she was getting established in her nursing career. Shiftwork, in that profession, is inevitable, and until the children were old enough to be left on their own overnight, they would be either here, or with a former neighbor of theirs, from the days when they were apartment dwellers in the city next to us.

We had beds and dressers upstairs for them, so that they had a place to sleep on their overnights here. I would waken them in the morning, make them breakfast and help them get them ready for school. Their mom would come, and then take them to school before going home to bed. And she worried, as I said, that the kids were too much for us, but we didn’t think they were. And I’d remind her that she had her former neighbors, too, who would have the kids during some of her weekend shifts, so it wasn’t all on us.

That couple was just a bit younger than we were and had developed a good bond with the kids, and her. Our second daughter will be the first one to declare that yes, it takes a village, and that she remains grateful she had a good one.

All of my greatgrandchildren that live close by call me G.G. It’s a name that my daughter came up with, because her grandchildren had another great grandmother on their mother’s side. I kind of like the name, myself.

Yesterday afternoon, we had those three little ones here, and they were assigned winter preparation tasks in the back yard while my daughter supervised. After having harvested one last meal of green beans earlier in the afternoon, it was time to call an end to the gardening season for 2021. All of the plants were pulled from the table gardens, cut up, and placed into those brown leaf and yard waste bags. The outside toys needed to be washed, and then set to dry in their clean “toy basket”, which is a re-purposed laundry basket.

The littlest one was the most eager to lend a hand. “I help!” was said quite succinctly and often until the perfect “job” was found for her. She was assigned the task of washing the toys. And since playing in the water is something that she loves to do, she was a happy little camper, and she did a pretty good job for being only two and a half.

It was pleasant outside, so I had the back door open as I worked in the kitchen to prepare supper. I’d consulted with my daughter earlier in the day, with regard to the menu. Her grandkids are picky little eaters. The littlest one is not. The older two been here with us this past weekend and we’d had takeout with the two of them on Saturday night, and then grilled burgers on Sunday night. Therefore, I chose to make a full supper last night.

My daughter suggested something she thought they might eat—chicken Alfredo. I had all the necessary ingredients on hand. She, being vegan, would have only the noodles and the sauce. She was originally going to have some plant-based “chicken fingers” as well but changed her mind. Since my husband doesn’t like the dish at all, it wasn’t much more work to make spaghetti and meatballs for the two of us.

I also made a bit of garlic bread to go with the pasta, and that is another thing she thought her grandchildren would enjoy. And after their time in the backyard, which topped off their long day at school, it made me smile to see that all three kids cleared their plates.

I do enjoy having them here, and I am doing my best to get used to the sheer noise of them. One’s tolerance for general chaos seems to wane as one ages. But the truth is that the chaos of children—from high spirits to minor disagreements that seem so egregious to a child, are all a part of the package. Being older, I know now just how damned fast time passes and little ones grow up.

Every part of the experience of being in the company of children is precious—and it was wonderful to have that back door open as I cooked, listening to the songs, and the laughter, and the minor conflicts.

It was wonderful to steep myself in life.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 October 13, 2021

We have a large walnut tree, which is situated on what is technically town property (they own to a certain distance from the center of the road out) and stands at the northeast corner of our house. When we moved in here in the 1990s, the tree, which was mature at that point, had a wide “crotch” of three main branches that our kids could reach by standing on the porch railing, turning around, and then…sitting down upon it. They took turns using “the tree chair” as they called it. I think at the time it was the thing they liked best about this new house of ours.

That tree-crotch is now forever out of reach, a good six feet higher than it was when we moved in, nearly thirty years ago. Next year, David tells me, we’re going to have to contact a tree service to come in to cut back some of the branches, because there are some getting dangerously close to our roof. We did this once before a few years ago and knew at that time that we’d likely have to do it again.

The walnuts this tree produces are highly prized by the squirrels, but to us, they’re rather annoying. You see, being fall, the walnuts are beginning to drop from the tree, and a lot of them hit the main roof, then the porch roof, before finally falling to either the sidewalk or the street. The ones that end up on the street tend to explode under the wheels of the cars that drive past. As you can imagine, it makes a mess of the road until the street sweeper comes by—usually not long before the first snowfall.

Some walnuts do make it to our narrow front lawn. David ensures they are not in the way of the lawn mower by tossing them into whichever of the front gardens is closest, so the squirrels have easy access to the free food. They do gather them, too, because the walnuts tend to “disappear” from the gardens. However, the squirrels also wait until there are squashed walnuts on the road, and then run out for an easy, buffet-style on-the-spot snack.

I feel like we play a game akin to Russian roulette at this time of year when we walk outside under this nut-shedding behemoth. So far, no one has been pinged on the head by any dropping walnuts. But it’s been close a couple of times. I might resort to holding an umbrella over my head the next time I venture forth from the protection of the porch roof. At the moment, our cars are parked across the street, out of the range of fire, as it were. Come the 16^th they must be moved to this side of the street. Our daughter has decided to park hers further down the street at that time, since she does have that pretty red brand-new car and really does not want any walnut dents on it.

Aside from the possibility of either people or cars being hit by one of these round green missiles, the other problem is the dogs. When they’re inside the house, napping on furniture or on people (depending) in the late afternoon or evening, they don’t like sudden sounds. They really don’t like it when something goes “thump” on the roof, and then rolls. They don’t like it one bit. And they aren’t shy in letting us know this.

Trust me when I say we do not need one more thing to make those furry little critters bark. Fortunately, in just a couple more weeks, the season of falling walnuts should be over.

Two days ago, Monday, was Thanksgiving Day here in Canada. We tend to celebrate our Thanksgiving the same way our neighbors to the south do, with turkey and pumpkin pie and every other “fixin’” you can imagine. One difference is that the day after is not the first day of Christmas shopping. Yes, we have black Friday—when the U. S. has black Friday in November—because some of the retailers here are based there, and also because Canadians love good sales, too.

However, while Monday was Thanksgiving, we did not have our Thanksgiving supper then. We are having our family feast, in fact, tonight. With two family members who are in nursing, we have to be mindful of their schedules. Our second daughter is preparing the turkey as you read this, and I’m really looking forward to going to her home for supper tonight. She’s had some renovations done over the last several months. These were supposed to have been a surprise for us, as we were planning to have our family Christmas supper last year on December 26, 2020. Sadly, that didn’t happen because that was the first day of a several month’s long lockdown here in our province.

So tonight will be my first time visiting her house since before the pandemic—and the renovations. There won’t be a huge crowd, just family, and everyone except for the little ones has been vaccinated.

It’s one step forward to feeling “normal”, whatever that is. But mostly it’s a chance to spend time with family—and there’s nothing in this world that I love more than that.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

 

 

 October 6, 2021

I enjoy the fall. I used to love the crisp days, when being outside, either doing yard work or just sitting would give me chilled cheeks, and an infusion of energy.

Fall was the time of our harvest, of course, when we had veggie gardens, and it is again even if our gardens are now at waist height. My mother’s garden was immense, and I can recall more than one fall weekend spent with my sister and I and our mother, harvesting that behemoth. My mom had a portable washtub with two “sinks”. It was made of metal, and she would haul that tub out and fill it with (icy) cold water from the hose. I recall red hands as I scrubbed potatoes and cucumbers. Produce was then laid out to dry, before being stored in our cellarway (potatoes) or sliced and deseeded and ground up for relish, or simply sliced or poked for pickles (cukes).

Harvesting in the Ashbury household these days is a much smaller-scale event. We have a few tomatoes still growing which we’ll leave until frost is forecast. And I do believe it’s time to pick the last of the green beans.

Yesterday I ambitiously set out to make two soups—butternut squash with red bell pepper and cream of potato. It was “nanny Tuesday”, the day when our daughter has her two grandchildren for a few hours after school. They’re here for supper, and I thought that if I was making home made soup, we’d have home made sandwiches to go with them.

The soups are easy enough to make. As for the sandwiches—I had bought a nice-looking corned beef brisket on Sunday and put that baby in my crock pot first thing in the morning. We get one of those maybe three times a year. We used to make what my cookbook called “New England Boiled Dinner”, but which we always called corned beef and cabbage. It’s exactly that, but we always added carrots and potatoes to the slow simmering pot, and it was always a good feed.

Mostly, anymore, I just put the corned beef into our crock pot. There are two decisions I have to make after that: rye bread or buns, and more importantly, do I fry up some sauerkraut to go with, or not? Yesterday the decisions were buns, and not for the pickled cabbage.

Our daughter doesn’t eat meat, but she does eat eggs, so making egg salad for her to enjoy with her soup was simple enough. As for the little ones, we decided to offer them both of the above sandwich options but had a sure-fire alternative available in case that wasn’t what they wanted: grilled cheese.

And it turned out that those grilled cheese sandwiches proved to be what they chose. We have a lot of fresh fruit in the house, most of the time. But we also have “canned” fruit, which we mostly use in the winter. Our supply chains, when it comes to food, still seem just a tad shaky here, still. I had wanted to buy some berries when we got our groceries on Sunday but there wasn’t much that looked really good. Fortunately, David volunteered yesterday to go on his scooter to the other grocery store in town, which is a ten-minute ride for him. There he found some berries, and that was what we gave the children for their dessert.

One thing we’ve noticed about having greatgrandchildren in the house is this. Neither of us has as much tolerance for noise and busyness as we had when it was our grandchildren who came around. And yes, little ones still get their energy the old-fashioned way—they suck it out of any adults who happen to be in the room.

Our youngest greatgrandchild—the granddaughter of our late son—was here over the past weekend. Our daughter has been known for years by various members of the family as the baby/toddler whisperer. When our granddaughter needed help over the weekend so she could pick up a couple of extra shifts at work, our daughter stepped up. That baby loves her great-aunt. And she’s precocious at two-and-a-half. One of her tricks is to pick up any cellphone at home when she isn’t getting her way with either her mom or her Nana, and cry out, “Call Jen!”

We are blessed as we do get to spend some time with three of our four great-grandchildren. And while we don’t have as much tolerance for the noise and busyness, as I said, we do have patience for those times when the oldest of our four “greats” want to talk. They’re eight and seven and beginning to show small signs here and there of being capable of reasoning. Around the supper table is one of the best places I’ve ever found for interesting conversation.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury