When I make stir fry for dinner there is enough rice to produce leftovers. There are plenty of things to do with leftover rice, yet the most common in our kitchen is making another dish to serve on top of it. This week it was black beans cooked with onion, celery, garlic, tomato and bell pepper. Both meals were satisfying.
During walkabout, the edge of the lake was beginning to melt. The geese in the photo will soon be swimming instead of walking on the ice. Spring officially arrives on Sunday yet for practical purposes, it is already here.
The challenge during this transition is to take my exercise outdoors and work in the garage, yard and garden for part of the day while temperatures are above 50 degrees. While doing so, I hope to preserve the time spent writing and reading in early morning. I have a better process this year, so I am hopeful.
Yesterday, I attempted to change the headlight on the auto and gave up before I broke the clip that holds it in place. I called my mechanic and scheduled it in the shop on Friday. Maybe their expertise will get the job done. For the time being, I don’t drive after dark, and there are fog lights, so it’s not an issue if I do.
This transitional time is the most difficult of the year. There has been so much work delayed because of cold weather. Like with leftover rice, there are plenty of uses for the new found outdoors time. Here’s hoping I can get to work and preserve what I spent all winter developing indoors.
On walkabout I saw the damage to the Mulberry tree. From the stain emitting from the cracked trunk, we can tell it was trauma. I suspect it was damaged during the Aug. 10, 2020 derecho. Because the damage faces Northeast, away from the house, it wasn’t noticed until now.
I’ll observe the progress of the wound to see how it goes. I believe the tree is a goner, yet will let nature take it’s course. I’m in no hurry to take it down with a chainsaw.
While the mulberry was a junk tree presumably from a seed dropped by a bird sitting on a length of rebar left by a surveyor as a property marker, it has been with us for our whole time here.
It produced berries, mostly for birds, and there may be more crops ahead. It is the last of two volunteer trees growing here when we bought the lot.
If it dies or falls apart I won’t replace it with another. It’s trunk grew to straddle my lot and two adjacent ones. It’s better to keep trees on my side of the line. One should not rush into tree management. Decisions made today are consequential for years to come. Sometimes we make the wrong decisions as I have.
After a quarter century, I’m getting to know the lot we developed. It is time to get outdoors and spend more time in the environment in which we live. Even if that means little more than walking in the yard.
I added a walkabout to my daily routine. Once the sun rises, and after I finish daily writing, I leave by the garage door and walk the property line of our 0.62 acre. Each day I saw something unanticipated.
The condition of trees, activities of squirrels and birds, and windblown trash deposited on our lawn. The walkabout provides an opportunity to take stock of our land and consider what needs doing, what should be left alone. I’m discovering a lot of neglected work.
There are at least three bird nests I’ve found. I’m amazed at how they take found objects and craft them. Anything pliable seems a likely building material, including plastic wrap and bits of fiber. I don’t remove the nests unless they fall from the tree or bush. For the most part they are woven into live branches with a sense of permanency.
I’d forgotten how large our yard is and how many distinct landscapes are in it. As we head into winter the walkabouts will be a time for observing, thinking, and planning our landscape. I don’t know how I went so long without this as part of each day.
Retirees will soon migrate to winter homes. Pontoon boats were pulled out of the lake, scrubbed down, and covered with tarps. The last volunteer work is finished, and even though local weather is quite pleasant, rents have been paid for winter homes, or second homes are owned in Florida, Arizona, or other points south and west. Warmer climates beckon.
The two of us remain in Iowa year-round. When it is cold, we leave home less often, read more, and with higher natural gas prices forecast this winter, will keep the thermostat down and stay warm with additional layers of clothing. I put an extra blanket on the bed when I made it this morning. We’re from here.
My reading consists mainly of three types: I read between 40 and 50 books each year; subscribe to four newspapers and several daily newsletters; and read linked articles in my Twitter feed. I stay well informed without watching television, listening to radio, or using streaming news sources. Reading is a mainstay of staying engaged in society.
In November I might read five 250-page books. It is getting harder to answer the question, what’s next? There is a backlog of books to read, both recently acquired and those that have been in the stacks for a while. Figure I’ll keep reading until at least age 80, so there’s room to read about 500 more books. The days of seemingly endless available reading time are over. Each book choice matters.
I spend a lot of time gardening and cooking yet read few complete books on the subjects. I have enough experience to do this work and improve it by tweaking current practices. I consult with books and online articles, yet more with farmers I know both locally and in other parts of the country. I seldom read a cook book or gardening book all the way through.
What am I seeking in a book? Some poetry, some fiction, and a lot related to my life. For example, I recently read Elizabeth Warren’s book Persist because of my connection to her presidential campaign and my interest in politics. I just finished The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization by Roland Ennos. I enjoy books that have broad historical sweep because I need escape in them from time to time. Lately I’ve been reviewing books from Thom Hartmann’s publisher and that work kept me busy in late summer. I recently read Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings by Gabriela Marie Milton who I found through WordPress. There is a stack of books about or by people I have known. My process for reading selection exists and needs a bit more self-awareness and adjustment.
A person can effectively read only one book at a time, so I work to choose the next one well. With winter coming I’ll read four or five books each month. I want to make sure it is the ones from the stacks, shelves and boxes in my indoors writing area that will serve my interest in remaining engaged in society.
It goes without saying, I want to protect my eyesight so I can go on reading as long as I have the mental capacity to do so.
Peppers and radicchio gleaned from the garden before first frost.
Early Friday morning I swept around the furnace so the technician arriving in the afternoon had a clean workspace. Most autumns we have the same company who installed our furnace in 1993 inspect and clean it before winter. It is a good idea.
The technician and I chatted outdoors near the garage door. Having chats like this is becoming a thing for me. I learned about the heating and air conditioning trade in the area: which companies worked on what brands of equipment, which were acquired by a larger company. We talked about how smaller companies maintain parts inventory with so many different brands of furnaces and air conditioners. Some companies will work only on brands in which they specialize. As our furnace ages, it will get increasingly difficult to get it serviced. There will be pressure to upgrade to new equipment. Like with anything in the economy the heating and air conditioning business is in transition.
We talked about electrification of homes and he knew few people who did not use natural gas for heating. If we are to get to a decarbonized economy, natural gas, a fossil fuel, will have to go. The conversation illustrated how far we have to go to leave fossil fuels in the ground and get to zero emissions by mid-century..
MidAmerican Energy supplies our home with natural gas for the furnace and water heater. On Oct. 12, they said, “Based on the market prices for natural gas over the last month, residential customers in MidAmerican’s service area can likely expect their total bills to increase by 46-96%.” We keep the thermostat low already, so we’re looking for ways to stay warm and run the furnace less this winter. We’re not sure what to do differently.
I recently fixed the smoke and CO detector on the lower level, replacing the one that stays plugged in with a new one with a ten-year lithium battery. If I’m still living in 2031, I need to remember to change it out. I should be testing it weekly as well.
Thursday afternoon I checked the garden. Weather forecasts were for a first frost that didn’t actually arrive by Friday morning. I gleaned jalapenos, bell peppers and a head of radicchio. The refrigerator is jammed with jalapenos wanting a dish. It will be some form of jalapeno sauce for use in cooking or maybe as salsa on tacos.
I went outside Saturday morning and frost is in the air. A month into autumn, winter will soon be here. We are ready.
Since we became a one-car family in August the extra garage space filled the way water seeks its own level. Garden stuff, tools and equipment were scattered in every available space. I spent a couple of hours cleaning up and organizing on Saturday. It was a mess, and now is less so.
When I began having larger garlic harvests I cut two by fours to make temporary sawhorses for a drying rack. “Temporary” because I didn’t nail them together so they could be disassembled and easily stored once the garlic cured. In my large panel storage rack I had the remnant of the four foot by eight foot by three quarter inch plywood left from making the platform for our daughter’s loft bed in college. I spread four two by fours across the span of sawhorses and put the plywood on top, finished side up. It made a sturdy table.
I used this surface to clean up the stairway where many cups, COVID-19 test kits, picture frames, and other detritus of living were camped. I also cleared the other sawhorse table near my writing table of its contents. Now I have two transitional surfaces to go through stuff. Three if I can clear the folding table I brought with me from Germany.
In a home, space tends to get used. While approaching septuagenarian status the goal is to clear that space and dispose of old printers and computers, countless electrical cords, and everything not needed for living out the rest of my days. I don’t need one hundred coffee cups. To live a life less on a life expectancy of 15.4 more years (figured using the Social Security online calculator) and more on being here now. That means stop talking about getting rid of stuff and actually do it. No more delays!
Once space was cleared, my daily task list quickly filled with activities related to the disposition of things. I’m a bit excited about the prospect of owning less. We also have plans for new space created. That is, plans other than filling it with more stuff.
I brought a generous pound of potatoes and two pints of canned vegetable broth from downstairs. There was an almost forgotten patch of leeks in the garden so I made leek and potato soup for dinner. With some sliced apples from our tree, spread with peanut butter, it made a meal.
It has taken some work to get the soup right. While sauteing the leeks and diced onion, seasoned with salt, in some of the vegetable broth I peeled and cut the potatoes into a half-inch dice. I added them to the leek-onion mixture with enough broth to just cover them. The Dutch oven simmered on low heat until the potatoes were soft.
Next I added a tablespoon of arrowroot powder mixed with water, then a cup of oat milk, and then two cups of frozen corn. It simmered a half hour. I added sliced chives from the garden and it was ready to serve. We don’t blend the soup to get a smooth texture, although one could. The key is reducing additions of cooking liquid so the soup thickens. Arrowroot helped.
I finished reading Poet Warrior: A Memoir by Joy Harjo this morning. Harjo is poet laureate of the United States. It was moving in a way other memoirs have not been. It had me thinking about my own life and how it differed and was similar to hers. Now that I’ve tended to my mother’s death bed, reading her story about her mother’s death resonated. I had not previously known of her connection to the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. Maybe what she learned there makes it easy to relate to the narrative. Highly recommend.
Our vehicle is in the shop getting a wheel bearing changed. The mechanics work was made difficult by rust formed on the chassis and undercarriage during our 20 years of ownership. They can do this work, but parts are becoming less available. “It’s not a long-term keeper,” my mechanic said of the vehicle. This is the second or third conversation we’ve had about the rust. Now I’m asking the question, “what kind of vehicle does a septuagenarian need to make it until he can no longer drive?” No answers yet, but thoughts.
The future of transportation is electrification, especially for passenger vehicles and light trucks. If I planned to keep a vehicle for a few years, then trade it, I would have no issue going electric now. We didn’t win the lottery last night and can afford to buy just one car to last. Electrification of automobiles is in transition presently, so as technology develops, who knows if what goes on the market today will be eclipsed by newer technology tomorrow? Well we do know. It will be eclipsed because there will be issues. I’ve worked with Original Equipment Manufacturers enough to know this.
I’m leaning toward a new Toyota Prius which operates with excellent fuel economy and has been on the market long enough to have bugs worked out of it. It is the right size for the two of us and I’ve ridden in them with friends on many occasions. We have a dealer in the county seat that posted a starting price of $28,814. Pricing is negotiable and dependent on specifications. I’d rather just keep the car we have but if repair parts are unavailable and the undercarriage rusts through, our hand is forced.
Once the wheel bearing is replaced we should be good to go for a while. A while may be all we have.
We are bunkering in for another lock down. In Iowa, the governor doesn’t believe in mandatory lock downs and schools are opening without mandates to wear a face mask or to get vaccinated. It is a setup for disaster. I bought an extra 30-pack of toilet tissue at the wholesale club and am ready.
While I would not recognize their music, last night the band Nine Inch Nails summed up where American society is two months into Summer 2021:
We will come out of the coronavirus pandemic eventually, either walking upright or six feet under. Am hoping it’s the former.
My current project is structuring a week that makes sense to a retiree. The seven-day pattern is a bit arbitrary, yet it is what I’m used to, what cultural resonance that remains encourages. Friday is my day.
On Fridays I eschew shopping and leaving the property to focus on household activities. For example, on deck today is picking up fallen apples under the EarliBlaze trees, harvesting tomatoes, canning Roma tomatoes, making apple cider vinegar, wrapping up a book review for Blog for Iowa, and my usual morning routine with an added hour of reading. The end of the day usually begins with supper of a home made pizza and sometimes a beer.
If there are things to wrap up with my engagements with groups, I pay attention to them on Friday. If it can wait until Monday, it does. Friday represents a turning toward renewal over the following two days of the weekend.
I’m okay with where Fridays are landing. We have to maintain our sanity, and making Friday my day is a step in that direction.
Best wishes to my regular readers for a happy Friday!
Second food bank donation: Winterbor kale and garlic scapes.
After ending her relationship with a large entertainment company in Florida last November, our daughter decided to move to the Midwest to pursue creative endeavors. Her new apartment rental agreement starts July 1. We plan to make some storage space in our home for extra possessions in case she needs it. Logistics and storage is part of what a parent offers an adult child.
We’ll see if storage space is actually needed. I looked at her new apartment online at a real estate marketplace company website. It appears she will have plenty of room as she is moving from a situation where she rents a single room in a house shared with others to a three-room apartment. She is planning the move and we are standing by to help as we are asked.
The storage space here can likely be created by discarding packing material accumulated over the years. Once finished with that, I’ll consolidate building materials in one spot and use the platform of the loft bed I built for her in college for any new storage items. Prepping the space is likely a one-shift job.
Since we married, we lived in five different places, including the current home since August 1993. The idea of us moving seems like too much work. Our home has become our main financial investment and the majority of our net worth. We are lucky to have a home we own outright. Even if financial conditions get dire, we’ll try to retain ownership.
After years of accumulation — from settling estates, from auctions and tag sales, from failing to dispose of outdated clothing, appliances and the like — we are filling it up. That needs to change as we prepare the home for our aging. For the time being, we can still make more space.
Journey Home 
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