And then the bottom fell out...

 September 9, 2026

Last week, David and I headed to the city which is only about twenty minutes from our small town. We needed to pick up his new glasses. He’d gotten a new prescription about a year ago, and then last fall he was having difficulties seeing. After an exam, he was told that he needed cataract surgery for both eyes.

That happened in January and March. His left eye had presented a bit of a challenge and took longer to heal. But finally by mid spring, all was well. He made an appointment, because it was time to visit his regular optometrist to get a new prescription.

Fortunately, the place where we purchase our glasses allowed him to bring in the frames he’d bought last year and have them fitted with new lenses.

After getting the glasses, we made a stop at a local farm-market. We bought a dozen ear of corn—three to eat that night with supper and the rest to be put in bags and into the freezer, once the kernels had been stripped from the cobs. I also had it in mind to purchase six or so large field tomatoes for stuffing. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any tomatoes that big, but I bought a small basket of good-sized ones, for sandwiches and burgers and such.

As we were out and about, I noticed something that seemed very odd to me. Here it was the first days of September. Usually, at this point, the lawns in our area are varying shades of brown with very few green highlights scattered among them. But this year, we didn’t have any browning of the local yards at all. It had been hot enough for that, and the sun had at times beat down upon us unmercifully.

However, it has been so wet here this year, that the grass remained green and vibrant. And required a lot more cutting than just the summer before. I looked up the stats just to be official, but I knew that the rainfall for the last two months had been more than double that of the previous year. I knew that because my arthritis has been screaming at me since early August.

Now, about buying those tomatoes. I was trying to be patient, waiting for ours to get big and to ripen. But I must have been prescient that day. Because, you see, yesterday the bottom fell out of the wooden garden that our larger variety tomato plants had been growing.

Quite literally.

The garden was fine yesterday morning when daughter left for work. But when she returned in the afternoon, there it was, bottom slats broken, dirt on the ground, and tomato plants mangled beyond repair. She rescued what unripened fruit she could. There wasn’t much there. It was a sad moment for me. For daughter? A bit less so. She has the realistic attitude that shit happens, and crying over spilled milk—or tomatoes—does no good whatsoever.

Of the other three wooden table gardens that we have, one is solid—because our son made it for his dad and brought it just ahead of Father’s Day this year. But the others are rotting. We’re going to have to come up with a solution for next spring, of course, and we will.

There was plenty of rain this year, but there was not nearly enough sunshine to help those tomatoes grow. Although one of our cherry tomato plants over preformed. That one plant gave us both the “cherry sized” fruit as well as a few that are about the size of Roma tomatoes. Weird.

Part of our problem is the ever-growing cedars in our back yard. They’re planted on the hill but doing a slow encroachment, shade-wise, over the lower yard. There are plans to trim those trees next month. But it’s also not good for the gardens to receive the “droppings” from the cedars, those seeds that the squirrels like to gather. Something about adding unwanted substances to the garden soil. Or so I’ve been told.

Daughter also planted beets and Spanish onions and two zucchini plants this year. But she put them in large pots and set them along the back walkway, between our gated and too shady back yard and the side street on the south side of our house. Those plants get full sun from morning to about three in the afternoon, when the sun is not obstructed by clouds.

Those plants done ok, but again, they could have thrived with more sunshine.

Farmers the world over will tell you that of all the ways there are for one to earn their living, counting on crops is the riskiest. That’s a truth we’ve always known, one that applies even to hobby gardening..

We’ll appreciate all we reap for the remainder of this growing season. And then, come the spring, will implement whatever new ideas we develop.

The fun really is in the trying.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

My lazy tree...

 September 2, 2026

I haven’t spent much time studying trees. That’s not to say I don’t care for them. I love trees. I love their look, their shade, and the way they seem, in their quiet and subjective way, to be a constant symbol of stability.

 I’ve never once before this vey moment considered whether or not any particular tree is hard working or not. But if I were to consider such a thing, I’m afraid I would have to rank our walnut tree—yes I mean you, Mr. Walnut Tree growing at the northeast corner of my porch—as the laziest tree that God ever created.

The very last to form its leaves in the spring, the walnut is a great, beautiful tree that provides wondrous, green-leafed shade. Right up until that first walnut begins to form.

The moment you see that first round green nut you know the truth—autumn is about to hit. Oh, not by the calendar, nor by the temperatures, and not in our thoughts, because that first nut is formed in August. It’s truly as if the tree says, “okay, there you go. Done my job. Now go away and let me sleep.” Because from that moment on, constantly, one after another, those beautiful and distinctive green leaves begin to turn a very ordinary yellow and then drop everywhere.

Everywhere!

And there’s no variety to them, they’re just a limp and useless yellow, not remarkable except in their landing everywhere and over everything.

The first couple of years that we lived in this house, we set out being scrupulous when it came to the tidiness of our yard. I’d get out every weekend and rake, rake, rake, until I had gathered up all the discarded leaves and bagged them.

A sense of satisfaction visited me on Monday morning as I left for work, because that front yard and sidewalk looked well-groomed and free of debris. And by Wednesday evening the yard looked as if its owners didn’t even own a rake!

I will admit that our enthusiasm began to wane after the first decade or so. The Walnut tree was our tree (even though it’s technically on the town’s land) and I didn’t mind caring for its debris. But friends, I would rake those leaves from mid-August (and a couple of years from late July) and just when that tree was finally bare and done, well, the various other trees in our neighbourhood would take their turn. The leaves of the maple and ash trees would change colour and drop. David would mumble something about the trees not even being ours. But I always felt that since I had sat on that porch and enjoyed their beauty through the spring and summer, my raking up those leaves was appropriate payment for that privilege.

The good news from the gardens is that there are several green tomatoes out there growing. The bad news is they’re still green, and taking their sweet time turning red. I accept that I’m more than a tad impatient. But after a very long three or four days of rain, yesterday there was sun and there’s a hint of that today. I’m certain that if we could have two or three sunny days in a row, we would indeed have fresh tomatoes just waiting to be picked and devoured.  Therefore, I’m hopeful.

This year we have the latest possible Labor Day we can have. I remember as a kid being sad when this happened: it had been a long summer, and I wanted to get back to school. I’d reached the point of boredom, and it was agony. Why? Because if I dared to say those two words (I’m bored) within hearing of my mother, goodness knows what awful chore she’d find for me.

For my entire life, both elementary (includes primary) and high school in these parts has begun the day after Labor Day—and ended in late June. I no longer have children or grandchildren going to school. I do have some great-grandchildren—four, in fact—of school age. But we do live on the bus route and so for me in a way, “back to school” is still a thing.

School back in session means there will be dog barking from about 8 until 9 each weekday. It also means I have to tell our daughter’s oldest chihuahua, “it’s not time yet”, when she asks for the porch. Kids don’t need to be barked at first thing in the morning.

By the signs and customs of my people—and canines—next week our routine begins to get back to normal.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

 

 

 

Unplugging...

 August 26, 2026

As I look around me, I can’t help but notice how challenging life is becoming for us all. Partly, and most absolutely, the environment—in any definition of that word you choose—is less easy going than it once was. Not only are there more physical upheavals (weather, wildfires and violence), but we are also bombarded with more information, more noise than we ever were in times past.

I tried to think of something I could liken the level of this seemingly constant barrage of stimulus to. The only thing in my lived experience was the few times as a young woman when I would go to a bar that had music videos playing on large screens at full blast, while everyone around you shouted in the (futile) hope of being heard.

The constant broadcasting of information is like that. People today seem anxious to unplug and go off the grid, desperate for a break—to disconnect from society. And they spend a lot of money to do just that.

Disconnecting from society didn’t used to be called that. It was simply alone time. You turned off the television and the radio. Unplugged the phone if you had to. And there, in the comfort of your own home you were “disconnected from society”. You could have that necessary alone time.

We all need time to be alone, to be able to power down our thinking, our coping, our emotional responses. We need to breathe. We need to relax. We need to be able to place ourselves in a state of grace so that we can cherish the sound of the ticking of the clock on the wall.

Oh dear. I just realized that last metaphor may not be as universal as it used to be.

The noise of social media is more harmful than we know. I’ve come to that conclusion. Social media can be a useful tool. In the right hands, it can even help save lives. But we must always remember that we are the users and it is the tool. We’ve given this particular form of media a kind of mission creep within the boundaries of our lives. Instead of using the thoughts and ideas of others to simply inform us, we far too trustingly have given those voices too much authority in our minds. We’ve let it replace our own sense of self, our own moral compasses, as well as our own common sense.

Even when I was young, aka the old days, the saying was: “The only problem with common sense is it's not very common.”

Another expression I would sometimes hear growing up? “If your friends jumped off the cliff would you jump off it, too?” Now, setting aside the humanitarian gut instinct of wanting to save said friends, the answer was always no. Because in those days the thought of needing to save anyone presupposed that those in need of rescue weren’t stupid enough to jump off that cliff in the first place. That saying meant this: you’re responsible for all of your actions, so stop and think first.

Recently I’ve been using this noodle of mine to better advantage when it comes to social media. And by social media, I mean the ones I use regularly: Face Book and YouTube. I do have Instagram, but I really don’t know how to use it very well. I used to have Twitter, but it died, the first social media platform to be torn apart by wild, ravenous beasts. I do not have Tik-Tok or whatsit, because there’s only so much modern technology I can cram into my brain.

So, using my noodle…..when I get postings from “friends” on my Face Book feed and it’s outside my own boundaries of decency, I unfriend whoever sent it to me. As for YouTube, I’m careful about what I will watch. Some videos have a hook they don’t honor. I stay away from anything that is obvious misinformation, or that intones hatred—and I use the discretion that I’ve been gifted with as my filter. I prefer uplifting messages, especially the rescue of animals or humans by random people. Because I have come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of people one meets via social media, and on YouTube, especially.

Extraordinary people who in the course of their lives have achieved much good; and ordinary people who, when placed in extraordinary circumstances, rise to the occasion and thereby fill us with pride and gratitude.

And I am convinced of the fact, and pleased to announce, that the latter far outnumber the former, by a landslide.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

 

 

Waiting on tomatoes...

 August 19, 2026

I don’t know if summer is waning or not. I do know that we are mid-way through August and I’m not certain what the weather is going to be like from day to day.

I don’t usually care overly much, because I don’t spend a lot of time outside. It’s just not something I tend to do anymore. I remember past years, long walks, visits to beaches and parks. Raking the leaves in October and earning red chilled cheeks for my efforts and loving it. Enjoyed every bit of outdoor time I got to spend with my family. I don’t dwell on the limitations I have now, they are what they are. So, I don’t generally care if the day is sunny or not, sweltering or not.

Except, of course, when I am waiting for the tomatoes that are on the vines to start ripening. They really do need sunlight to do that, and we haven’t had a whole lot of sun over the last couple of weeks.

Here I sit with my stuffed tomato recipe ready to go, but I need ripened beefsteak tomatoes and so far, while we’ve had some of the cherry tomatoes to nibble, the larger ones are still green. Those I live with seem to be on the same page with me, here. They’ve both begun wondering aloud if there was something wrong with the plants we got this year, that they seem to be taking their damn time to ripen.

And because I tend to be a teeny bit perverse at times, their echoing of my thoughts got my attention.
The last summer that we had a really good bumper crop of tomatoes was the summer of 2023. And I do recall at that time, I was so tickled with the bounty of fat juicy red fruit I picked in one day, that I took a few (well, maybe more than a few) pictures of them.

So in theory it was a simple matter to access my camera download file. These photos are stored digitally, and they show the date that the pictures were taken.

I am relieved to report that those pictures were taken between late August and well into September. Hopefully that means there’s time yet for me to eat my fill of fresh picked tomatoes.

Having worried a little about them, my mind skipped ahead to autumn and so has our daughter’s. We have enjoyed several meals of green beans from our garden so far, but we already know we won’t likely have enough from our own garden to freeze and enjoy through the winter.

We don’t grow corn but always get enough from our local farms to freeze. We’ll add a few baskets of beans to that plan, and we thought we’d also buy a few butternut squash—the last more for the convenience of having it on hand when we have a hankering for a supper side dish—or a soup.

I make several soups in the fall and winter, and they are almost always gobbled right up. The family’s favorite by far is cream of potato, or potato/leek, or even potato/bacon. I actually get special requests from our “second daughter” for that, and I usually make it for her. My family also likes a hearty squash soup, and all those soups are easy enough to make. I’ve also made mushroom soup, and a few times I’ve served cream of broccoli, too.

But I’ve always loved a good home-made chicken soup. Chicken noodle, and chicken with rice. And those I make from pure chicken stock.

We purchase packages of boneless/skinless chicken breasts which we then cook up and put through the food processor. Thus ground, we serve it as a supplement meal to the dogs. They get kibble, but at night they each get a quarter cup of ground white chicken meat. Low fat, good protein and the dogs love it.

How I cook the chicken varies. In the summer months, I slow simmer the pieces on the stove top in a bit of water. But in the cooler weather I place the meat in a lidded casserole dish and bake it. There is always a good amount of “juice” remaining, and since I don’t add any water to the casserole, that juice is pure chicken stock. And my how good that tastes compared to anything from a can or a package. I very rarely need to add anything other than salt, some chicken, and either rice and carrots, or noodles.

Daughter and I will schedule the gathering of the veggies for stocking our freezer for either September or October. We considered going to a very large and amazing outdoor market here in our neck of the woods in a community called St. Jacob’s. But I know myself and would be tempted to buy more than I can easily process if we did so.

So we’ll shop very local. Daughter has promised to help because, despite my desire to just do it all myself, I’m no longer able to manage the chore alone.

But those stuffed tomatoes? Mine to make, certainly. And mine to eat, too—as I’m the only one in the house who enjoys them.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

 

 

The power of your words....

 August 12, 2026

I play with words for a living.

It’s true! At this point I’m working on my seventy-second title for my publisher, Siren-Bookstrand. I cannot tell you exactly how many words I have written in my lifetime. I can tell you that, since becoming a published author, and taking into consideration my novels, a novella or two, and of course these weekly essays (since the autumn of 2006, once a week, minus a small handful of Wednesdays missed) the total is more than four million words.

Can you imagine? No wonder I’ve had carpal tunnel surgery twice on my right hand. Although in the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that the first time—and it was on both wrists—was due to the office work that I had done in the course of all of my nine-to-five working life. And the only good news there is that’s why it was only on my right wrist this time. Because I play with words only now and not numbers, too.

But I digress.

Words have meaning. I want you to read that again, because that is one of those sentences in life that has become a common place saying without actually being understood. So here it is once more:

Words have meaning.

Or to state it more accurately: words have power.

That’s a truth that has been repeated again and often without being fully comprehended. In some cultures, both historically and in the present day, people don’t give their names out to just anyone. There is a deep-seated, perhaps even intrinsic reluctance to give one’s name, because it’s seen as a giving away of power over the one named.

In the last century, the belief that words had meaning/power was at the heart of the self-help/motivational movements that many people used as their own personal north-stars. And then of course, there is the Bible.

God created the world by speaking it into existence; and then He created humankind in His own image.

Words have meaning and they have power, and nothing annoys me more in this life than when people just open their yaps and let it all hang out. Linguistic inaccuracy and ignorance are not considered sins in the traditional sense. But they should be.

This isn’t voodoo, and before you tell me you don’t believe that words have power let me ask you a question and give you a couple of examples.

If you doubt that words have power, then why do you compliment someone who’s feeling down? Surely their mood has nothing to do with you. And yet you tell them something good about themselves, something nice, and their mood is improved, and their spirit is refreshed.

Your words did that.

Conversely, those of you who are parents, teachers, or bosses, cannot deny that sharp words, words used as weapons, deflate the emotions of the person you’ve hurled them at. They wound. Say the wrong thing and your employee/student may quit. A few careless words, and your child dissolves into tears.

Your words did that, too.

Those are two personal examples that point to a larger, universal truth. We all need to be a little more careful of the words we choose to use. Because there’s one more power our words have and it’s this: our words, used recklessly and with abandon, rob us of our credibility and our integrity.

To the point that we’ll open our mouths, and no one in this life or the next, will take us seriously.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

Loving and loss...

 August 5, 2026

Over the last few years, I’m very grateful to say goodbye to the month of July. That wasn’t always the case.

When I was a child, and even into the beginning of my married years, I looked forward to the seventh month every year. We used to call it Christmas in July—both before and post marriage. My brother’s birthday was on the first, and my mother’s was on the fifth. My own birthday was on the twenty-first.

David and I married on the fourteenth of July.  Our first son was born at the end of that year (in December), and all was well until he was three and a half years old. That year, my mother died in April, and I became an orphan at the age of twenty-one.

The next year, our second child, our son Anthony, was born on my mother’s birthday! It felt at the time as if God had planned it that way. The following year, I gave birth to our daughter on the thirteenth of July. This was also the birthday of a dear friend as well as two of her own siblings, and she had begged me not to do it…but really, Diana, I had no choice!

Then, after almost three decades of Christmases in July, of a birthday a week for three weeks straight (5th, 13^th, and 21^st), we lost our Anthony on the thirtieth of July—twenty years ago this year. And my brother left us on the 29^th of February, 2020.

It is natural in life that the older you get, the fewer people there are within your circle. It’s natural but not easy. What isn’t natural of course is having to bury one’s child. All losses forever possess the ability to render us to tears, occasionally. But the loss of a child is a wound that never heals sufficiently to allow one to move on seamlessly.

That’s not to say that I regret being given the opportunity to be the mother of the one I lost. He was a challenge, and the path was twisted, but I did, and I do, celebrate his existence in our lives and in my heart. I loved him beyond words and I still do.  He brought our second daughter into our lives, and together they gave us three beautiful grandchildren…including the first one who was with us for only a few days. I find comfort knowing that the two of them are together.

Love, the kind that sinks deep into your soul and wraps around your heart, is always worth the pain of loss. Always.

I’ve often written in my essays, in one way or another, that the purpose of life is to help us become the best version of ourselves possible. It’s a journey of growth, of disappointment and triumph and yes, tragedy, and those are the refining tools used to shape us.

Oh, one can certainly decide, freely, that they’ve had enough of that pain of loss, and close themselves off to the possibility of more. They refuse to make new friends or adopt new pets and to just stay to themselves.

But then you stop growing. You stop being, in a way. You stop…serving your purpose. You’re no longer living, you’re just …breathing.

There are good memories. There are smiles from looking back and there are even moments of laughter there. Perhaps the tears are always just waiting in the background, but that is only natural, too.

Even the most beautiful of gardens welcome the rain.

Today is the fifth August and July 2026 is receding in the rearview mirror. It’s time to look forward again. To think and to plan and to hope and to dream again. Until the next July.

As I contort my body to look beyond my computer monitor at the sunshine and blue skies waiting there on the other side of my office window, I feel contentment. That’s the thing about being shaped and molded by the tools in the Creator’s hands.

There are always a few quiet moments of joy and thanksgiving in between the sessions. Moments of peace and quietly building strength.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

Prayers....

 July 29, 2026

The summer of 2026 has so far proven itself particularly unpredictable and unsettled. As I watch the news coverage of thousands of people here in North America being impacted by fires and storms, and even those in Europe facing never-before-seen wildfires, my heart breaks.

Last night the news coverage panned a small town in the Midwest United States. The view was of shells of buildings surrounded by kindling. Lifetimes, solid homes, homes that had been filled with love and laughter, and lives, all reduced to kindling.

That particular tornado strike didn’t claim any human lives, and that is a blessing. Take it from one who knows. Things can be replaced but people can’t. That said, looking at the devastation, I can’t help but think: where do you start?

Some people question the existence of God. They will say, “if there is a God, why does He let these bad things happen?” I know from my own lived experience that there most definitely is a God. But He never promised us that bad things would not happen to us. He does promise to be with us as it’s happening. He comforts us and gives us the hope that we need not only to know where to start, but the strength to work for recovery and the love to encourage us as we do so.

Things seem worse than they have been in years past, weather-wise. I understand that my perceptions may believe that is so, but I’m still anal enough to want empirical data to confirm it. And I’ve seen enough of that to believe that we are on a different path now, we humans on this blue planet, and it’s a path that lacks certainty.

Of course, summer is just a season to us now. We don’t associate this time of year with the concept of vacation. We’ve had vacations enough to last us a lifetime. As one gets older, the lure of going and seeing and doing tends to dim. Especially if one has physical challenges, which we both do.

We don’t feel cheated. It is what it is. One thing we’ve both always been good at is being realistic. We’re in our seventies; moving about is difficult. No one activity or path has ever been so vital to us that it’s the be-all or end-all. The best thing we can do—and in my mind the right thing to do—is to just simply get on with it. I have chores that I strive to complete each day, and while it may not be pretty in the doing, it gets done.

My only bottom line these days is that quitting is not an option. In whatever way I can, I need to keep marching.

I’ve been slightly more successful in applying discipline to my writing of late. For that, I’m very grateful. As long as I can keep doing what I believe I was put here to do, I intend to do so. It’s not as easy as it once was. But then, I’ve never been afraid of hard work.

If you’re in a position to help others who are struggling, please do so. The Red Cross—both in Canada and in the U. S., is a good choice. And if your grocery store provides a bin for your local food bank, a can of soup or two or a box of pasta can mean a lot to someone in need.

One more thing. I’m also advocating good thoughts, and prayers for those who are the victims of storms, fires, and floods.

I get a bit annoyed when people scoff at the idea of “thoughts and prayers”. In my lived experience, prayer is the most powerful tool that we as individual human beings have.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com

 

 

 

 

Another birthday...

 July 22, 2026

Another birthday has come and gone. It arrived with the speed of a thought, but I know that’s only because I wasn’t counting the days. I’m past the age of truly looking forward to my birthdays. But neither do I dread them. They happen. Quickly this time, it seemed, because I was just getting on with it.

I am so very grateful to everyone who reached out to me with well wishes sent to my Face Book page! To know that so many people took a few moments out of their busy lives to do that—well, it’s a powerful blessing.

Thank you to all who took that time. And if any of you didn’t, please don’t worry. You can catch me next year!

I much prefer simple celebrations if I’m the focus of them.  I don’t handle any kind of spotlight elegantly. I’m more of a behind-the-scenes kind of person. Fortunately, when it came to my Birthday, that was never a problem. We’ve always had a tradition in my family (starting from my childhood) that the birthday person gets to choose that night’s supper. My sister, whose birthday was in January, almost always wanted some of the salads and cold meat she hadn’t had since the fall.

My mother was an inventive cook—and a good one—and always trying out new recipes. Some of the “different dishes” she would sometimes make were chop suey or egg foo young, honey garlic ribs or pineapple chicken, all of which she called “Chinese food”. I always opted for some of that as my go-to-birthday supper fare.

The first actual birthday party that I ever had was thrown for me by my parents when I turned eight. There were a few kids in our rural neighborhood, and we had games and sandwiches and Kool-Aid—and cake as well as some gifts. It was many more years after that before I had another. When I was a child, the lack of parties mattered. Now, when I think back, my memories are mostly good. I can’t find any resentment within me for a life lived frugally. It was what it was. Looking back, I can honestly say that there were some moments of sunshine and bliss.

Such moments are to be cherished, because they are not the norm in life for anyone. They are the highlights. I am lucky enough to have had a few highlights.

So now I am officially 72 and working on my 72^nd title. Since my first book only came out in 2007, in my 53^rd year, that’s not too bad. We’re not rich, financially speaking. But we’re not sinking either, which is what’s important to me. I don’t need a lot; I just need enough.  

My carpal tunnel hand is healing well after the surgery, and I’m beginning to try and build up my stamina when it comes to chores around the house. The last couple of months have been difficult. I don’t like sitting and doing nothing. I never have. It’s always been important to me that I do my share. More than, if I’m being honest.

I’m not kidding myself. I’ll never be able to do what I could easily do even ten years ago. But I can do more than I have been, and that is my goal for each day. Do a little more than the day before.

Today has been pleasantly cool compared to the last few weeks. Yesterday, my birthday was really quite rainy, with a few thunder-boomers thrown in for good measure. I didn’t mind that too much, except for the resulting ache in my arthritic joints. And our daughter, who was preparing the foil chicken packets to go on the barbeque, didn’t mind the rain, either.

She’s a formidable woman, and Mother Nature was wise enough to ensure the rain was done in time for her to cook our main course.

It was a wonderful meal shared with some of my favorite loved ones. There was laughter, and there was love.

I am blessed and highly favored.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

Coping...

 July 15, 2026

When I was a child there was one thing that I learned, very early on, not to say to my mother. Two simple words that now, as a fully grown adult I understand are words spoken, at one time or another by every child who ever lived. But at the time, the shock of some of the outcomes of expressing those words left a scar on my psyche that is still there.

Those two words? I’m bored.

Yes, if I ever said them within my mother’s hearing, you could bet your cute little tushy she would find me something to do. And it wasn’t a fun something to do, either. I learned as much about parenting from my mother’s successes as from her mistakes (though she would never admit to having made any mistakes, not ever). She was as stoic bordering on ungiving, when it came to anything emotional, as I believe it was possible for a person to be. One of the outcomes of her demeanor was that, growing up, I felt unloved. My answer to that experience was that my children grew up suffering my hugs and words of love and affirmation every day.

Now friends, I can tell you here and now that when my children said those two words to me, my response was to suggest they find something to do. To play and use their imaginations. Not that I didn’t expect chores from them. I certainly did. But I didn’t look at them as a source of free labour. They were children. They had the right of free speech as well as the responsibility that comes from being a part of a family. They had a right to say they were bored if that was how they felt. I wasn’t going to punish them for that.

I do credit my mother’s influence for my attitude toward boring jobs. Not just jobs around the house, either. When I worked outside the home, it was office work I performed, mostly in the field of accounting. Talk about boring? Hundreds of invoices to process every month, very little that was unique; all the long tasks of clerical work required to produce financial statements…that can be boring, let me tell you. So, I would play mental guessing games. How many invoices could I process in the next half hour? How many would be in this category of expense, as opposed to that one? Re-reading those last few lines, I may have to split the credit for my reaction to boring tasks. Half for mother, and half for Mary Poppins and her spoonful of sugar.

I still use that tactic today whenever I’m faced with something to do that requires attention but little thinking. When I’m preparing the laundry, there are literally piles of things to be sorted, sprayed with pre-treatment solutions, separated into actual baskets. You get the idea. I don’t need to use any sort of mind games to get the dishes done. I simply was them (by hand as I have never had a working dishwasher). Doesn’t take long at all.

It took more than my mother’s influence for me to master the art of waiting for appointments—or during them. It also took the wisdom that comes with age. Here, I can tell you my cell phone helps. I do have three games on my phone, and when I am waiting, I tend to turn to that little device for diversion.

From the menu of life, sitting and doing nothing is not a combo I order—unless I’m under the weather. And then, like it said on that old poster one used to be able to buy and hang, if I sits, I falls asleep. Hopefully that sleeping happens at home and not out in the wider world.

Apparently, I snore.

The whole point of today’s essay is this: Growing up, one learned coping mechanisms, because life didn’t always go as planned—and few children were allowed to believe it ever would. Crap happening is as eternal as the sun rising in the east. The person with the best chance of getting to old aged relatively unscathed was the one who not only learned that lesson but mastered it.

And now that I am older, I know something I never even considered until very recently. The person who doesn’t learn how to cope with the dross of life not only guarantees themselves a miserable life experience; they tend to spread it around so that they don’t suffer alone.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer adventures...

 July 8, 2026

I don’t often take the time to think back to the summer days of my childhood. Those glorious days of playing outside all day, not a television or cell phone in sight. I was seven, the last summer in the little house on the paved road (all the crossroads were gravel). The next year, we moved across the field into the “big house”, and yes, comparatively it was big. The little house had only two actual bedrooms (and a kitchen with an eating nook, a living room, and a bathroom). When my paternal grandmother moved in with us, she had one bedroom, and my brother used a make-shift space just big enough for a bed jammed into the front entrance of the house, in what we called the vestibule. While it was his room, of course, that front door wasn’t in use.

I can’t recall if we used that door much after my grandmother passed. I can tell you that it was my brother who took over her bedroom. And the other bedroom? Mom and Dad, my sister and I. I was moved out of my crib and into the three-quarter bed with my sister when I was five.

The big house had four bedrooms. Three upstairs, one for each of us kids, and the larger one downstairs for mom and dad.

A whole bed, a whole bedroom, to myself! That, my friends, was a very big deal. Outside our bedrooms was a common area, about eight-foot square that we dubbed the hallway. It held a bookcase, and a couple of chairs, had its own window, and of course the protective railing surrounding the stairs.

Our houses—both the small and the big—were situated in a rural area, not even a named community, within our township. There were, on our stretch of the paved road, eleven houses along about a mile of road, between the two concessions. Some of the houses had a tree of two in their yards, but most of the trees extended behind the houses and away from the road. The bushland hid a couple of old trash dumps and one small structure that might have been either a hen house or a rabbit hutch at one time. It didn’t carry any signs of past animal habitation. But there were neither glass nor signs of glass in or around the two small windows, and neither was there a door—just the three openings.

I recall at least one occasion when we sheltered there during a sudden cloud burst. The roof kept the rain off us. Walking farther away from the road through the trees and such, one eventually encountered a privately owned stone quarry. The same one where, some decade and a half later my husband would be employed for nearly forty years.

There were five or six of us kids who would trek around together and make our own fun, back in the day. We even tried our hand at building a fort out of twigs and small branches. Someone would bring a couple of towels, and so we would have a roof, of sorts. Just country kids out playing in the woods, yet close enough to home that we could hear our parents call “supper”.

Wintertime didn’t bring an end to outdoor fun. The land on the other side of the paved road, all during my early years, was marshy at best, and sometimes sported an actual, large pond. Skating fun was ours, and it was a learning curve to avoid those places where a few mostly dead yet stubborn weed stalks pushed out above the ice.

David and I spent our first year of married life in a large city. But I’d been a country kid all my life and didn’t feel well near the end of that year breathing in the industrial pollution. Mom still owned both houses. When her tenant left, she rented the little one to us. Then, a couple years later when she died unexpectedly from a heart attack (just thirteen years after my father died), David and I “swapped” houses with my sister so we could have the “big house”.

My kids’ version of being kids in the country was playing in the field between our house and my sister’s. And in the winter, since our marshy pond on the other side of the road was long gone, I would make an ice rink in that field. One year, especially, I got it in mind to build as good an ice rink as they would ever see. That year, they were still skating on it in early April.

All good memories, except of course for the loss of my parents.

Those days seem so very far away.

Our children didn’t get to repeat our free-roaming experiences. Each summer we would take them on a few picnics to the “lakes”—we had two conservation areas with man-made lakes not far from us, as well as both Lake Ontario and Lake Erie within an hour or two drive.

But they didn’t get to form their own memories of just heading out each morning and adventuring the way we did (David steered a similar path to mine in his youth).

The rhythm of life changed from the days of my youth to those of my children’s. Our lived experiences became a part of who we were, and who we grew up to be. As our children grew from their own summers.

I do wonder about today’s children. They don’t seem to get a whole lot of outdoor time. And I think they have more screen time than can possibly be good for them. As for making their own fun? I have the sense that’s something they’ve never had the chance to do.

And maybe it’s not as strange as I at first thought when I realized that I don’t envy the kids of today at all.

I pity them. And I worry, a little, about what their lack of daring and imagination will mean to them as adults.

More rhythm of life changes, and not necessarily in a good way.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

National birthdays...

 July 1, 2026

To all my friends and family north of the forty-ninth, Happy Canada Day! And for my American friends, whose holiday is this weekend, Happy Independence Day!

We celebrate our national birthday here in Canada on July 1st much the same way as y’all in the Untied States celebrate yours three days later, on July 4th. This year, Canada turns 159 years old. I’ll concede, since this year is America’s semiquincentennial, that the celebrations you’ll be having will be more robust than our own.

Here we have parades, large and small community parties, and food cooked on outdoor grills. There’s not as much beach activity up here on July 1^st as one might find in warmer climes on this day. But there are flags, and patriotism, and that wonderful and necessary sense of being a part of something bigger than oneself.

When I was a child, this day held another significant aspect for me. This was my brother’s birthday. My mother’s was on July 5th and we would often get together to celebrate both milestones at the same time. We made a point of this especially after my brother married and moved about thirty-five miles to the west. To the same small town that we also now call home and have for more than thirty years.

It was a wonderful kind of sentimental coincidence that the year after my mother passed away, our second child, our late son Anthony, was born on her birthday.

I can’t separate this day from thoughts of my brother. When I was much younger, this holiday was called Dominion Day. Then, we were officially known as the Dominion of Canada. We were and still are a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations. There was a huge parade in the large city close to us and my brother had me convinced that the parade was in his honour.

Canada dropped Dominion in 1982 when we repatriated our constitution from Great Britain.  

We here in the Ashbury household haven’t participated in any events this year, mainly because the weather is just too darn hot for any of us. David was invited by one of our grandsons to a small, nine-hole golf course. It was his first game of golf is several years. He came home happy if hot. A bit annoyed with himself at how much effort the game had involved. But pleased to have gone and to have spent son with his grandson.

For myself, I was the anxiety therapist for our two dogs, and a puppy bed for my two of my daughter’s dogs (daughter was at work). This duty I happily performed in air-conditioned comfort.

As I was putting the finishing touches on this essay, a thunderstorm approached. With the heat we’ve had the last few days, that’s no great surprise. The power flickered as the storm hit, and so I waited the weather out before completing my work.

So far this summer—well certainly since the tomato plants went in—we’ve had an abundance of rain. We’ve only had to water the veggie gardens a couple of times. I do recall, that a few years ago, we had another such summer. And all that rain resulted in the most lush and plentiful tomato harvest we had ever seen. That was in 2023.

I have my fingers crossed that we experience an encore of that miraculous outcome. There’s nothing more beautiful or tasty than a fat, juicy beefsteak tomato.

I have hope that the rain that is beginning to taper down to a nice steady patter will do us a favor and kill the humidity. But I know that doesn’t always happen.

My best wishes to you all, Canadians and Americans alike, for a safe and joyful national celebration. May it be a holiday to remember!

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patience...

 June 24, 2026

Welcome to Summer, 2026! The solstice is in our rearview mirrors, the longest day is behind us, and now we begin our long crawl back down from the summit of that mountain. I prefer the days with lots of sunlight to the days when darkness lasts until breakfast and then falls again before supper. But time has its own agenda, and really, the best we can do is enjoy what we can of each day as it comes.

This has certainly been the year for sports so far, hasn’t it? On thing I have noticed this year is that the fans of these various sporting events are the all-in sort. Humans crave to be a part of something bigger than themselves. It’s in our nature. But this year the fan frenzy has reached next level fever-pitch.

Dancing and screaming at the top of one’s lungs, giving one’s all in order to party hardy (or hearty), would be an excellent way to burn off any strong negative emotions smoldering under the rug, wouldn’t it?

We’ve had a great deal of rain over the last couple of weeks. Enough that there’s been no need to water the gardens. I’m not going to complain. I recall the summer of 2023. That, too, was a summer when little water was needed from the garden hose. And that was also the year of the bumper crops—green beans, yes, but the tomatoes! Oh, the tomatoes! Big, luscious and plentiful.

I’m salivating just thinking about the possibility of an encore to that summer. There’s a dish I like to make—stuffed tomato casserole—that begs for nice big Beefsteaks. I read several recipes then just came up with my own. It’s the one thing I really look forward to in the summer. And it was a dish I couldn’t make last year, because our crop didn’t cooperate.

My fingers are crossed for this year.

We now have sod in the area where our lawn was torn up for the water main work last year. Then, late last week, the equipment and the crews arrived, their goal to tear up the new road laid in the intersection—the corner to the south of our house. They’d done a really poor job laying asphalt in the fall, and by spring there was already the beginning of a pothole. So for the next little while, we are destined to listen to the sound of roadwork once more.

But not, apparently, today.

After this intersection has been completed, the concrete crew will return to fix the curb on our side of that intersection and then—Please, God—they will install a step or two so that I will finally be able to walk a straight line from the bottom of my porch to the road. When I spoke to the project manager at the end of May, he told me that I should see that crew by the end of June.

I remain hopeful.

It’s sometimes really difficult to let those close to me have their little rants about “they should do this or they should have done that”. Maybe they should. But they didn’t. I called, I discussed, and now I will wait and see. If I’m still left with the cliff from my lawn to the concrete pad they installed by the second week of July, I’ll call again.

I’m trying very hard to give patience a chance.

Even when it comes to the matter of my surgical recovery. Yes, today I am at the keyboard, composing this essay. Yes, I am using my right hand as well as my left. But I won’t work for very long. Soon, I will retreat to my recliner with my iPad. It’s an easy matter to use my foam whatever it’s called to rest the device upon. And I will swipe pages, as I read, with my left hand.

My right will just lay there and look pretty while, open to the air, my wound heals, little by little.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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

 

 

 

An update...

 June 17, 2026

Good morning! It’s Wednesday—aka hump-day to the work-a-day world. And it is also time for my essay.

First, and briefly, I did see the surgeon who performed the carpal tunnel procedure on me last Thursday. He changed my bandage, gave me new and looked me dead in the eye. “You have to baby your hand!” And I have to see him again in three weeks time.

All right, then.

For the record, I’ve been trying to baby my hand, but patience has never been my strong suit.

When I told him that I had been wiggling my fingers, he said that was good. Now, I’d like you all to do a favor for me. Hold your right hand up. Wiggle the fingers of that hand. Kind of looks like typing/keying, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought!

Moving on.

I have been watching more daytime television in the last few weeks, which I don’t mind provided I can find something interesting to watch. I’ve stumbled on a home/design program that was filmed in Canada and shown on HGTV. Only 8 episodes, so I am parsing them out. Since I’m about to watch number 7, I decided to see if there was something else similar on that network. So I searched and I found another, and it has 10 episodes. So, I should be good for a while.

But on Sunday, the sound bar I had bought in 2019 decided to quit. I had bought it because our TV’s sound had gone a bit muzzy. We had purchased this television when our granddaughter, Emma was 7. She’s going to be 27 in September. When the sound bar died, I began searching online and found they had gone up in price, slightly. Daughter and I discussed the situation. And she asked me if I knew how much a brand-new TV similar in size to the one we have (55 inches) would cost. I had no idea. Our current, beloved one had set us back nearly three thousand dollars when we bought it. It had been one of the very first “smart” TVs and even had been three-D compatible! Now to its credit, this television is early 20 years old. But its sound wasn’t the only issue. The picture has not as sharp as once it was, lately, either.

Daughter took a moment to look up on her phone and showed me a new television, comparable in size—for under four hundred dollars. It made more sense to get a new television than a sound bar for about half the price of the new, when the appliance it would be used on was clearly nearing the end of its life.

Monday afternoon, she and David went out and bought the new one. Once home, they easily carried it inside, and it took her less than an hour to take out the old and set up the new.

She’s off this weekend and is going to “play around” with the color to get it the way we like it. A new television hadn’t been on my bingo card for this year. I’m just happy to have it, and to not had to have blown up the budget to do so. And, as with our last new one all those years ago, I can say with some authority that I won’t use many of the new and “smart” features on this one, either. I’m okay with that. I can do what I can do and watch what I want to watch, and that’s more than good enough for me.

The temperatures have dropped from the near-scorching highs of a week or so ago. I’m a happy medium sort of person. I like mild, warm weather, as long as I’m not gasping in the heat. And I like cool, as well, but don’t want to be conflicted as to the fate of my freshly brewed cup of coffee (i.e., do I drink it or do I simply hold it to warm my hands?)

Today I’m thinking that cup would make a good hand/finger warmer. But carefully, because, you know, still-healing incision here.

Our gardens are doing well. We have two of the large box gardens filled with green beans, and the other two with various varieties of tomatoes. As well, daughter managed to get her hands on a few very large pots. We have two holding zucchini, and two holding beets. David used a large tub to plant some potatoes in, and the only other veggie we have, also in separate pots, are Spanish onions.

I decided to ask Google what sort of summer was in store for us, here in my neck of the woods. The answer was warmer that normal, but with periodic episodes of cool, with an unpredictable amount of rain thrown in. I wasn’t fooled. I can translate “damned if I know” from several different sources.

Enjoy the great days and be patient with the not so great.  That’s what I plan to do. Or at least, I’ll try to.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

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