2020 Life Logs, Day 313: Another November Summer Day
Date: Monday, November 9, 2020
Weather: Sunny; High 70, Low 51 Degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, Falmouth, MA
It was another summer-like day in November. The sun was shining and the temperature was 70 degrees. I put on a long-sleeved shirt and jeans and walked with Shadow. But I was actually too hot and had to come in and put on a tank top. It was that warm mid-morning. Then I started preparing the garden for the winter, did some yard work, and just generally enjoyed the day. I was disappointed in my garden this year, but the fact that I am still picking tomatoes on November 9th made me take a deep breath and reassess.
Lettuce, arugula, kale, and Swiss chard just didn’t do well. But beans and tomatoes, crops that like warmer weather, flourished. The strawberries I transplanted a month ago from the hanging pots on Heather’s deck are flowering and producing little strawberries . . . in November. So that worked. Clearing a few trees to expand my garden and planting tomatoes worked. So, I will think about all of this over the winter and make plans to try again next year.
I am so thankful that I am able to do yard work this fall. The two herniated discs in my back are healing. But I do still have to be careful. Raking just doesn’t work, but the new leaf blower works great. I always hated noisy leaf blowers, but this one is battery-operated and is not nearly as noisy as the gas-powered ones. It allows me to blow the leaves out of nooks and crannies and then I am using Heather and Jed’s battery-powered lawn mower to mow the leaves. They get chopped up and go into the lawn mower bag. I then drive the mower with the full bag to the edge of the woods where I am dumping the leaves. I can easily handle the weight of the full lawn mower bag. Last year I raked and put leaves into big paper leaf bags. Then I had to haul those to my car and take them to be composted. The bags were big and heavy. I just couldn’t do the yard work that way without throwing my back out. This year’s solution is working so much better for me. I can once again enjoy doing yard work.
Tomorrow I have a book club meeting in the morning and then I pick Ollie up at 12:20 as it is an Early Release day. I have offered to take all three boys plus Sam’s friend Robert to go to the beach, go hiking, or bring them here to go kayaking. If the older boys decide they just want to hang out at home, Ollie and I are going to drive to Plymouth so he can see the Mayflower II. He has been studying about the voyage of the Mayflower and would like to take a closer look. We got a glimpse of it as it exited the Cape Cod Canal on its way back to Plymouth, but now that he has read about the number of people onboard and some details about life as they sailed across the Atlantic, he will see it through different eyes.
