Home again!
We're still luxuriating in the wonder of our Queen-size bed, after fighting for room and comfort in the puny double-size bed that came with the cottage we'd rented for the week in New Hampshire. Although a double-size would have been ample for both of us, add two little dogs who feel just as entitled to stretch out in comfort as we do, and you have a recipe for disgruntlement and disentitlement. We don't begrudge them their comfort, but we do harbour some silent resentment toward these little dependents when it comes to sacrificing our own comforts to ensure theirs. Thus it is that we now revel in the large comfy landscape of our own bed in our own lovely home. So, we slept in late, deliberately and with forethought.
Nothing to do but relax and luxuriate and they, our two companions, Button and Riley, didn't at all mind. After a bracing shower (our shower being large enough to host us both) we relaxed again, during breakfast which consisted of cantaloupe melon, banana, coffee/tea, cheese omelette, dark rye bread toast, cream cheese. Which post-consumption calls for a vigorous ravine walk, and so we set off to re-acquaint ourselves with our very own ravine. Mushrooms, mushrooms everywhere, in colours you might not credit: bright orange, pale blue, grey, white, mauve, pale yellow, yolk yellow. Wonders to behold; surely some of them could grace a dinner plate? We've read that puffballs of which we saw more than a mere few, are good fare, but who could take the chance? Best to enjoy them at a walking distance.
Bluejays, robins, chick-a-dees, red squirrels all welcomed us back to our home haunt. As we walk, we talk, we discuss our enjoyment of our recent week away in New Hampshire. The good points and the deficits of the cottage we had rented. Good? primarily its location directly in the Waterville Valley, providing us with easy access to many of the trails and climbs that we now feel most comfortable with. We're no longer able to ascend the larger mountains that most attracted us when we were younger with our three eager children in tow. They're all in their 40s now, with their own lives to live, leaving us where we were, together as a dynamic duo before our children were born.
We decided to drop by Canadian Tire after our walk. After we'd been stopped and chatted for a while with our friend and neighbour Mohindar, who was bemoaning the ill fate of his family members for whom danger lurked everywhere. His daughter, Luraleen, now living and working in Toronto, fell on her subway descent on the way to work and badly injured her ankle, necessitating yet another trip to Toronto to see to her welfare, despite that her mother's brother lives in the city. Mohindar's arm and hand are still in the slow and agonizing stages of recovery after his surgery in the early spring, leaving him unable to work. His son Imram has recently undergone another bout of ankle injuries due to strenuous soccer playing, yet another injury to his young body; little wonder he complains.
At Canadian Tire we looked at spring bulbs. Irving had already brought home a pack of 50 grape hyachinths for me, and I wanted to look at others, coming away on this occasion with two packs of additional tulip bulbs, and one of scilla, which I plan on putting into the ground in early October to give them the opportunity to establish a good root system before the onset of winter. They'll go, for the most part, in our more recently established garden beds. We also bought a set of dinnerware on sale, mostly because we're such suckers, especially Irving, for dinnerware. We have so many sets it's laughable, but we have the place to store them in our large kitchen and pantry, and we enjoy using different sets for different types of meals and even to reflect the varying seasons. And, truth be told, I'm rather notorious in our family for breaking dishes - fumblehanded, I guess, try as I do to be careful.
Later, both of us engaged in a little garden clean-up, assessing how the garden has changed in our week's absence. The honeydew melon growing high up on the arbour, secured by the netting Irving placed around it for safety reasons before we left, is just about ready for picking. Irving brought in a bowlful of tiny red ripe cherry tomatoes, far sweeter than any we could purchase. We'd brought enough of them with us on our trip to serve for the week we were away, in salads. We also had a half-dozen of the large yellow heritage tomatoes ready to be taken in. And the herbs had replenished themselves nicely in our absence. The hanging baskets of flowers were fine, thanks to the watering ministrations of our next-door neighbour, Susan. We brought back a really neat nutcracker for her as a gift; she collects nutcrackers.
Deciding to cut back the too-tall Caragena, both of us took tools to the job, he a pair of loppers and me a pair of secateurs, and we filled two large paper compost bags with the results. We were inspired to do this by the fact that despite that we trim the tree once or twice in the summer it's now grown beyond the size that we're comfortable with, in its front box beside the porch. They're fairly hardy, we think, and should begin to put out new growth from the tips of the major branches we've left intact, roughly five feet in height. If not, down it comes and something else will take its place.
Then the backyard required attention and we moved there with our two little dogs following. I cut back the roses, having grown rather too wild, also the length of the Mulberry, the dwarf Willow, and dead-headed flowers here and there. Then I noticed that Riley was pawing something under one of our giant tomato plants and curious, I went over to have a look. Damn, it was a little mouse, obviously in distress, and unable to preserve itself from Riley's curious ministrations. I called Irving over and he lifted the mouse carefully, in a paper napkin, looking at it closely. It looked near death, poor little thing. It had an odd green filament wrapped around one of its legs, and its tail, and with it, long strands of straw-like grass. Irving thought that the material came from nest-making, and that somehow the tiny creature had found itself imprisoned within the nest-making material and was unable to free itself. Irving cut away the offending material, but it was obviously too late to save the poor little thing. He carried it up the street to the ravine. Sad, sad.
Irving went off to pick Angelyne up from school, and soon she came bursting through the garage door to the house: "Bubbe!, Button, Riley!". Shoes off, school bag dropped on the floor,we were all treated to hearty hugs, then she surveyed the kitchen, the refrigerator. She agreed to eat a sliced peach if I were to make her a grilled cheese sandwich, with onion bread. Delicious, she said, biting delicately into the sandwich, busying herself with the creation of a desk-top namecard to satisfy the requirements of her social studies teacher who was experiencing difficulties recalling the names of the various children in her classes. What?! That someone was unable to recall the name of our adorable, very visual grandchild?
The world is indeed a strange place.
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, September 21, 2005
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