Winter, With a Distraction of Pears

February 21 – How really fast time skips on these days! When I get up in the morning, I plan on doing a lot of jobs all through the day, but I don’t always do them all! I fact, as I sit here right now, stopping long enough to remember if I accomplished this or that or the other, I am pretty pleased to find that I really did put in a good day’s work, even if I substituted some tasks for others.

[ Cold and cloudy days ]

Well, for one thing, I had no TV around when I was a kid. We didn’t choose to have one for our kids either, so that gave us several hours daily to do more important tasks. And, of course, who ever heard of a blog when I was growing up! Even today folks ask me what I’m talking about when I mention writing one!

OK, since we went to bed very late last night, we thought we should stay in bed a little longer. Lying quietly on the desk beside the bed, in the special spot she enjoys, Cat was sleeping soundly. Must be that she had chosen to come inside when called this time. She must have remembered trying to sleep outside in the cold and didn’t plan on doing that again.

[ A typical breakfast ]

How different was the weather this morning, than it was during the early evening and through most of the night. Never sure how I feel about rain, dark clouds, and sleet! And yes, it has been chillier for the last couple of days. After our worship time together, we were off to the kitchen for breakfast. Nice to have a husband who enjoys putting that meal together. Cereal and milk, jam or dip on zwieback, several kinds of fruit, or other items like those mentioned. I know that breakfast is Dale’s favorite meal, and he probably has more calories with that than he does for supper. When he retired from work years ago, and didn’t have to eat a third meal, we decided to stick with breakfast and supper.

While I worked at the computer, he worked around the place to get some jobs done. I won’t mention them here, because he may write a blog about what he had done during the day, so you could read it directly from him.

For some reason or other I had a hard time getting the pictures to go where I wanted them to go! I know it’s my fault, but I never could figure out why putting in pics works so well most of the time, but then at other times, nothing works, no matter how hard I try. Usually I can send six or more photos at once, but today, as sometimes happens, I was lucky to get ONE in the right place.

[ Ye olde pears ]

By the time I had moved away from the computer to work in the kitchen, an hour had gone by! While doing various kitchen chores I thought how much busier kitchen times can be when things are outside GROWING!

For example, if this had been mid-fall, there would probably have been sitting on the floor beside the sink a bucket pretty well filled with pears that I had knocked down out in the pasture by the fence. If the pear falls by itself, it isn’t long until the wounded areas become food for yellow jackets and other kinds of insects.

Down in the basement, we would often have five or six trays of those Dale and I had harvested when we had the time. After peeling a batch, and filling the big kettle full, I just had to can them since we wouldn’t be able to eat a whole batch in a day or two.

[ Rummi-kub before bed ]

Then I’d tell myself that since I was canning that first batch, I might as well go down the stairs to the basement and carry up a another big box full of pears which I would ALSO get ready for canning while the first one was cooking. And when that job was done, I often had four jars of beautiful fruit.

Now how did I get distracted onto that subject? At any rate, once the kitchen was done and there was nothing more to take care of in that area, it was off to play our usual games of Rummi-kub before we go to bed. And may the best man (or WOMAN) win! – CHRIS