October 15 2022

Tomorrow I turn 70. Just a number—I will be only one day older than I am today. But numbers (like January 1) make us take stock of where we are and where we hope to go. Rereading the brief blog I wrote when turning 60 gave me a glimpse into how busy my life was back then. I think it will be nice to keep a daily (or weekly) record of life a decade later. And maybe read it again when I turn 80, DV.

It’s early yet, and I’m sitting in my leather chair in the pine room, watching the sky slowly lighten.

Phil is still asleep, as we are both jet lagged from our trip to Amsterdam and Venice, and he is “under the weather” with the respiratory flu I gave him. I’ve been up since 5 a.m., as I went to bed at 8 last night. I like this early rising! The house is completely still, and there’s a sense of timelessness. 

Yet the table is loaded with ripening tomatoes from my neighbor’s garden (Rick, aka Tomato Man). These will commandeer much of my day as I make both green and red salsa, as well as enchilada sauce. I also need to rescue the rest of the jalapeños and sweet peppers from the garden before a hard frost coming soon—and make pickled jalapeños. I should pull out the withering bean and tomato vines (leaving the kale and carrots to sweeten in the cold weather). And cut a large bouquet of deep purple chrysanthemums. 

For we have returned from 70-degree weather in Venice to an autumn Midwest chill. Here is what we woke to yesterday morning—the first snow!

The snow is gone now, of course, but the memory of it lingers, chilling the bones and perhaps the spirit. I walked the upper trail in the morning yesterday, then the lower trail in the evening (have to burn those 700 calories/day!). I wish I had had my phone to take pictures. The evening walk began with drizzle and sleet, but that moved slowly eastward, and by the time I reached the trail the sun had broken through, creating a dazzling rainbow. Meadow and trees were all the rich colors of autumn: gold, green, rust, faded red, orange,  pale wheat. The sky a brilliant, clean blue. Everything cold, damp, fresh. Exhilarating. 

I met on the trail a man with a bike, searching for something. He had lost his gloves—one rainbow-colored, he explained, and one black. If I found them, he asked, could I place them on the path so he could find them the next day? I promised to do so. We both exclaimed about the rainbow, which had just appeared, and then went our separate ways. Later I kicked myself for not offering him my gloves. He had far more need of them on the bike than I had on my walk. He seemed a bit lost.

It is good to be home again, and to be feeling better.