It's your decision...

 August 27, 2025

As of today, there are four more days left in the month of August. I think this may be our new normal, sliding into what one would consider to be traditional late September temperatures for the last week of what used to be thought of as the hottest month of the year.

I’m not complaining, exactly. I can cope, especially first thing in the morning as I get out of bed and begin to shiver. I can run hot water into my coffee mug to take the chill off it before brewing that first cup. I can drape a blanket over my legs, and struggle into a sweater. I can even turn on my office’s “electric fireplace” to get the chill off the air. There most definitely was chill in the air first thing this morning.

However, it’s a solid line I draw against turning on the house’s furnace in August. And yes, when the idea crosses my mind that there is no way in hell that I am turning the furnace on in August, it is my mother’s voice I hear.

The last few days have featured rain, and that’s okay too. My arthritis will act up regardless, but the lawns and the gardens need rain. The crops in the fields need rain as this is the crucial build up-time to harvest. I’ve never been the sort of person who believed, or wished, that the weather should be just so to suit my individual needs or desires.

Chilly and damp? I have heating pad, blanket, topical balms and if need be strong medication to counteract the effects thereof.

This past weekend we attended a baby shower for our soon to be born fifth great-grandchild. The baby, a girl, is due mid-September. The event was held outdoors, at a beautiful, large, city-run park. Bathroom facilities were just across a small narrow road from the location of the party, which was held under and around a nice and spacious pavilion.

I don’t generally attend outdoor events, because, again, the arthritis. But I do when the event is one that I truly want to join. And I accept as fair enough the consequences of my decision to do so.

That has always been how I have managed the inconvenience of osteoarthritis. This condition has, of course, become progressively worse through the years. I began using a cane more than 30 years ago, to help me walk, and because there were times my ankles would threaten to give out.

These days, if I can’t walk it with my cane, I use my walker. If the walker won’t cut it, why, I have a three-wheeled motorized scooter at the ready. That scooter is sturdy enough to support me and small enough to fit inside most stores, shops and malls.

I don’t let my condition prevent me from doing what I truly want to do. If the next day I’m sore, well then, so be it.

Life is 5 percent what happens to me and 95 percent how I deal with it. I won’t tell you I never break down and cry, because that would be a lie. I will tell you I do my best to do that in private. I’ve always advised in these essays that it’s ok, once in a while, to get on the pity pot. Just as long as you clean up, and then flush when you get off.

I don’t break rules, especially my own.

Getting older is no picnic, even if you do occasionally attend one. It’s not a journey for the weak of spirit. But it is a part of the lessons I believe we are meant to receive and hopefully master as we travel this path of life that we’re on.

The difference between learning to cope, and giving in to the negatives is this, and only this: when you learn to cope you find a peace and contentment within yourself. You’re happier, and if you hang on with both hands and your teeth to your sense of humor, you’re a joy to be around, too.

However, if you prefer to wallow in self-pity like a hog will wallow in the mud and manure of its own pigsty, you’ll find yourself miserable and for the most part, alone.

That decision, and the inherent consequences of it, dear reader, is yours and yours alone, to make.

 

Love,
Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

Sweet memories

 August 20, 2025

The last few days have been much cooler than the blazing heat of just a few days before, and it’s been a bit rainy, as well. I’m glad to see the rain, as the grass has turned that parched shade of brown it gets this time of year but will now soon be green again. Of course, the rain is appreciated for gardens, and in our case for the tomatoes and the green beans. Yesterday, I had my second lettuce, tomato and sweet onion sandwich of the season. The first step, of course, is going out to the garden and choosing a tomato.  Ah, the sweet memories from my youth. Strolling out to the garden to pluck a ripe tomato for lunch was forever permissible and actively encouraged.

When I was a child, my mother always had a thriving veggie garden. One that was big enough to warrant paying the farmer down the road each year to come by with his tractor to first plow and then disc the empty patch. My garden memories are all from after my father’s death, when there were four of us in the “big house”, a four-bedroom story-and-a-half farmhouse on a country road. We had three-quarters of an acre, which even now I consider huge.

In those days, the vegetable garden wasn’t just trendy. It fed us. We grew some corn. Of all the veggies we grew the corn was perhaps the most whimsical. One couldn’t grow enough in a couple of rows in our garden to garner more than a few meals into the freezer. The corn was just for us to enjoy in the moment. I know my mother froze some, but she also supplemented what we grew with a few dozen ears from another farmer, farther down the same road so that there could be several side dishes of the veggie to grace our fall, winter and spring table. 

We grew carrots and radishes, green and yellow beans, and plenty of cucumbers. We had tomatoes, squash, potatoes, zucchini a few times, and sweet green peppers. We grew cabbage and Brussels Sprouts. But not cauliflower, as Mother said it was too fussy. We also had dill planted, so that in the fall, when it was time to harvest and process, we had all we needed, grown on our own land to make dill pickles.

All of us worked that garden, weeding, hoeing, and watering. Picking here and there to supplement our supper through the summer. When it was time for a full harvest, that time Mother would deem to be the day when it was clear that the colder weather was on its way? It was a matter of all hands on deck, to pluck everything or risk good food being spoiled by the frost.

My mother never could abide wasting food, and neither can I.

On “harvest weekend” it was my job as the youngest was to wash all that came out of the garden (except the cabbages). Not that we used chemicals because we didn’t. But just to have the veggies clean, and dried and ready to use. We had a set of laundry tubs that we would pull out of the house and into the back yard. One tub was filled with water from the garden hose.

My most vivid memory is of ice-cold water and red, painful hands. I was about ten at the time.

After the harvest, there was the freezing and the canning. Potatoes which had been washed and then dried in the autumn sun and fresh air would be gently stored in paper bags and put into what we called the cellarway. This was a small, darkish room that resembled a cellar in that the walls were made of huge stones cemented together. This room had a five-foot-two ceiling, and contained our freezer, our water pump, and our hot water heater. The back of the narrow room held wooden shelves that we used for storage—a pantry, if you will—of goods both bought and made. On the bottom shelf went our potatoes, where it was the darkest and the coolest.

My mother always made sweet green relish, chili sauce (not spicy like chili. Not sure where the name came from), dill pickles and sweet bread-and-butter style pickles, too. She tired her had a time or two at making sauerkraut, but she found that to be a long, drawn out and frankly too smelly an endeavour. And she would also always make jam, but for that confection, she turned to other area farms for their pick-your-own strawberries and blueberries.

I do recall she made crab apple jelly once, from our own two trees—trees we gifted her for Mother’s Day one year and that she had planted, one each in two round flower beds she dug in our front lawn.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the large rhubarb patch that thrived close to the garden. Each year we looked forward to that stewed rhubarb which, of course, we made in our large aluminum saucepan.

One always knew when the sweet green relish was being made. I recall the way our eyes would run a bit as mother added the “bouquet garni” to the huge pot that contained ground up cucumbers, onions, vinegar, and sugar. Her process was to bring the mixture to a slow simmer and keep it cooking for a few hours, and over the course of a couple of days, before declaring it ready to be put in jars and sealed.

I swear that smell even worked its way into the woodwork.

In my career as wife, mother, and chief procurement officer of all things edible, I tried my hand at all my mother had made, save the sauerkraut. My canning days are over now, but I did what I could while I could and in that, I have no regrets.

My oldest son is the one who took up the mantle of sowing and reaping. And he’s added to his repertoire by learning how to “smoke” meats as well.

Traditions may be adjusted and modified. But the thread of them connects us, generation to generation. It’s a kernel of who we were and what we did instilled into the hearts and minds of those who come next. A very basic and lovely form of immortality.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

Neither snow nor rain...

 August 13, 2025

By the end of last week, we’d all gotten used to living in an area under construction. Even the dogs had become used to the noise of the machines, and the people wearing hard hats, in our vicinity. And then this week we have been living in relative silence.

The crew had mentioned that they wouldn’t be here on our street this week, that they had to be in another area of the town, completing their previous project.

It’s hard to believe that our small town has work crews in more than one place at a time, but it’s true. With all the new housing that has gone up in the last couple of years, the town is in the enviable position of having relatively full coffers. And you know what that means, right? For reasons that I will never fully grasp, if the town doesn’t spend the money that it has budgeted for various projects each year, funds received from collecting fees and fines and taxes and such, then the following year provincial and federal grant money will be less than the year before.

Those of us who are parents find this a hard concept to wrap our heads around. In the lexicon of my teen years, “way to teach the local government how to manage their money!”

In the lead up to this work project, we had believed that we were as prepared for what would be happening as it was possible for us to be. And that was true except for two minor exceptions.

The first was we missed the small paragraph on the back of the newsletter that advised that our regular garbage collection trucks would not be allowed in the area at all during the project period. But not to fear, our garbage would be collected on our regular day—by the construction crew. Monday night was a bit of a last-minute scramble as we had to use black marker to put our address on the recycle boxes, so they could be returned to us. But we got it done.

The second exception was discovered when we realized that we have not received our mail since the pavement came up. Now, we double checked all the paperwork we had, and there was no mention of an alternate place to collect our snail mail from. Not at all. And since both Amazon and UPS have been making deliveries hereabouts as the crews got to work, we didn’t expect our post office to be any different.

Normally this wouldn’t be a problem for us, but I had ordered some balm from the west coast, and it was being sent via the post office to us. It was due to arrive last week, and it didn’t. I did receive an email from Canada Post telling me that the parcel has not been delivered, that it was still enroute, and that they would let me know when it might be coming. But there hadn’t been a word from them in nearly a week.

I've learned something in the last couple of days, and as all of you know I’m always looking for new things to learn. This week’s “new thing” is that if you want to get in touch with someone to tell you what’s going on with your mail delivery…. good luck.

I got no real human on the phone, yesterday, except when I called our local post office branch. You might have thought that is where I should start, but I knew the mail was collected from the depot in the next town by those whose job it is to deliver it, and that our local post office had not part in that process. We’re lucky here in these streets as we still get home delivery.

Our local postmaster gave me a number to call which was (of course) different from all the other numbers I had found online and subsequently been calling. And I suppose the deed was done faster than one might expect. It only took two and a half hours to know that my package was indeed somewhere—unless it had been sent back. But by last night I had received word of its precise location.

With any luck at all, by the end of the day today I will have my package in hand. The only unknown portion of this equation is whether or not I will chide the postal people for being “wary” of the dangers on our street, when three other delivery services were not.

There is a famous quote that goes back to ancient Greece, about the nobility of those who work delivering mail. It goes, “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” I think that’s true, for the most part.

But no one every said anything about road construction.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

Roadwork...

 August 6, 2025

You may recall that our house is on a corner lot. And it seems like only yesterday that the powers that be here in our town, in their infinite wisdom, decided to reconstruct the cross-street at the south side of our house. That was a small project as these things go, and when it was done, we were left with a newly paved side street, but one without a paved dip into our driveway, as the workers were told there wasn’t a driveway there.

Yesterday, two weeks after the original projected start date, began the work on the street that our house is addressed upon.

My husband, utilizing his extensive knowledge of these matters informed us several days ago that likely the work would begin at the southern-most end of our street which, at two and a half blocks away, is the end furthest from our house. No need for any rush to take up the large pavement stones that form our walkway between our house and the sidewalk. No need to hurry to move our mailbox sitting on the edge of the sidewalk out of harm’s way.

As I said, they began yesterday morning just before eight a.m., and by 10:00am, there was no longer any pavement in front of my house. By the end of the work day, the crew had removed all the pavement for the entire length of our street which is the first phase of this infrastructure project.

And this morning they began to pull up the sidewalks.

At least the last time, my office being two rooms away from the action, I was able to focus well enough to get some work done. This time? Quite frankly, your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not creation is going to happen at my keyboard. Lately, focus and discipline don’t seem to be my strong suits.

I can tell you it’s a very odd sensation, having my entire house trembling as the compacter makes certain that the base layer of the road—mostly brown earth of an indeterminate sort—is well and truly tromped down.

In other news, the oppressive heat has broken, and I credit my daughter entirely with that fact. Why, you ask? Because a couple of days before the heat broke, she finally gave in and ordered a new air conditioner for her area upstairs.

The day the unit arrived was the first coolish day in ages. Before I could chide her, she came in, looked at the heavy box at the base of the stairs, looked at us, and said, “you’re welcome”.

A good sense of humor has always been strong in this family.

We have been happily nibbling on cherry tomatoes from our garden and have now enjoyed our second fist-sized tomato. There are several green ones growing, and we’ve all got our fingers crossed that some of them will gain impressive size before ripening. We all enjoy a light supper of toasted tomato sandwiches, and we are all eager to make it so.

We already had our first veggie-only supper of the season a few short weeks ago, and that was quite delicious. Green beans, new potatoes and corn all picked fresh that day.

David had an interesting experience on his dog walks yesterday morning. For some time now, he has transitioned this routine by using his scooter. He has trained the dogs to walk while he rides. But because we live on a busy street (when it’s not under construction) he lets them ride for a few blocks, as he takes them to a quieter neighborhood.

The dogs love this. Rather than having to walk at David’s pace, which is not what once it was, they are able to run to their heart’s content. They always come home with big doggie grins. There’s not much that can brighten one’s spirit in quite the same way that a doggie grin can.

But yesterday, the work crew kept such a good pace that when he returned from walking the one dog—about a half hour—he drove his scooter from the north corner a half block before he realized he wouldn’t be able to cross the street on his scooter to get to our porch. And on his return from walking the second dog? He realized he would have to go up the hill on our north cross street, across a small street that runs parallel to our own, and then down the hill of the street right beside our house.

But he now knows it’s doable. Later today he will discover whether or not he can do all that twice, all on one (new)battery charge.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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