Light at the end of the tunnel

Since I last wrote, my husband broke his knee, my dog was diagnosed with an enlarged spleen (and given his age, there is nothing we can do about it), and I’ve been barely clinging to sanity. I’ve had to take on a lot more responsibility these past 8 weeks, which is why I haven’t updated.

However, Lance should be off his crutches in just a few more days. My dog is doing as well as you could expect a 15-year-old blind dog with arthritis to do — though there is the threat of his spleen rupturing at any time. And I feel less overwhelmed than I have been.

We’re having our deck and screened-in porch stained today. That was one of the major chores I wanted to get out of the way before winter. Ultimately, we had to hire someone because painting the patio railings two weeks ago just about did me in. This was the last thing on my list and I was going to have to get my parents to help me, but I realized that I just didn’t have the mental energy to tackle another big project.

The Bradford pear in our front yard is gone. That’s actually how Lance broke his knee. He was trying to cut it down himself and a branch came down and knocked over the ladder he was standing on. We ended up hiring a tree service to finish the job.

The garden’s about to be put to bed for the winter. We already had a few frosty mornings, so everything looks pretty awful anyway. The tomato plants have been pulled up and tossed in the compost. The ever-bearing strawberries have stopped producing. I still have some herbs that are doing ok and some little spinach and lettuce seedlings that are coming up. But even though they are cool weather crops, they aren’t making a lot of progress. They’ve been the same size for a week or more now.

I recently thought I was going to overwinter some swallowtail caterpillars.

I noticed them in my parsley at the end of September and got really excited. What I didn’t do was protect them and all but one disappeared. So I covered the remaining caterpillar with an old mesh pop-up hamper I was no longer using, which I pinned down with landscape staples. Something pulled that up and took the remaining caterpillar.

RIP, my little buddies.

We’ve been having a historic drought for most of the summer and so far this fall. We got about 4 inches of rain from Helene a few weeks ago. But everything is still bone dry. Our creek bed is dry. Our pond is the lowest I’ve ever seen it. With everything going on this year — the late start to the season due to my broken foot, Lance’s injury, and this drought — this hasn’t been the best year for the garden. This just hasn’t been the best year in general.

But I did see my first aurora last week. From my phone camera because it wasn’t visible with the naked eye. But it was still cool. These were taken from our patio.

I am looking ahead to next year. I turn 50 after all — a milestone year. I plan to do School the World again in March. Guatemala, this time. And I have a few other things in the works that I won’t talk about yet until the details are more concrete. I just plan to have a better year next year.

I’ll leave you now with some images of a jack o’ lantern I carved on Sunday when I went on a hike with my local Hikerbabes chapter. I haven’t carved a pumpkin since I was a kid, and I’m not actually sure I did any of the carving at all since it’s not advisable for kids to play with knives. I remember my mom carving pumpkins and I think we designed the faces. Of course, there’s all these fancy pumpkin carving tools now, and those are fun to use.

This was supposed to be a screaming pumpkin but it looks more tired. So basically, the pumpkin is me. I added a remote-controlled outdoor flameless candle with a timer and sleepy pumpkin head sits yawning on my porch, waiting for someone to bring it some caffeine.