2024 Life Logs, Day 293: Just Me and My Shadow
Date: Sunday, October 20, 2024
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 65, Low 51 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA
This was a quiet Sunday with just me and Shadow muddling through a beautiful fall day. I had some Encore work to do this morning and then I spent time outside weeding. There is a common, but very invasive plant that is trying to take over the edges of the backyard commonly called Lady’s Thumb. It is an annual plant in the buckwheat/smartweed (Polygonaceae) family family and is considered an herb. In folk medicine it is said to prevent gastric cancer. And some species are edible. All well and good, but it literally takes over everything. There is a wonderful patch of Lemon Balm in the same area. The Lady’s Thumb is growing under and over that, so I am pulling as much of it as I can from around the Lemon Balm because I love the way it smells. After my back had enough of weeding, I needed to take a long walk, so Shadow and I walked over to Heather and Jed’s just to see what was happening there today. They were working on the deck replacement project. Ollie had gone with his friend Seton and his family to the Wellfleet Oyster Festival and Sam and Jonah were in their rooms. Heather and Jed had friends coming to dinner, so they were stopping the deck project to go food shopping. That reminded me that I needed to go food shopping as well, so Shadow and I headed home. My little bit of food shopping required that I go to 3 different stores and took almost two hours. Part of that time was spent talking to a friend of Heather and Jed’s that I haven’t seen for a few years. Her son used to play soccer with Sam when they were in elementary school and now that son is taking a gap year, and in a few days will be sailing from Fiji to New Zealand. Somehow, we managed to talk for well over half an hour. It was almost dark when I got home, so I played a quick game of fetch with Shadow and called it a day.
Tomorrow, I will spend the entire day in the kitchen. I am fixing dinner for the Goldpebbles as Heather and Jed are both off to meetings in the late afternoon and evening. Then on Tuesday I am taking a butternut squash and beet salad to a luncheon, and I need to bake the squash and beets tomorrow. On Tuesday night I have my wine group and I am taking tiny baked honeynut squash filled with toasted walnuts as my pairing for my choice of a wine for Thanksgiving dinner. I will bake the honeynut squash tomorrow as well. I will get a break from food preparation on Wednesday as I am going out to lunch with friends to celebrate Jane Woodin’s birthday. It was a couple of weeks ago, but this Wednesday was the first date the five of us could get together. Then on Thursday I go on an all-day field trip to historic Lexington. Thank goodness my calendar is clear on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday except one soccer game on Saturday. I’m sure things will be added as the week progresses, but hopefully I can rest up to get ready for another week in the life.
