2024 Life Logs, Day 366: Garden Clean Up on New Year’s Eve
Date: Tuesday, December 31, 2024
Weather: Mostly Sunny; Temp 49, Low 41 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
On New Year’s Day, sometime between 1986 and 1988, Mark and I went to pick Justin up from an overnight at his friend Warren Decker’s house. Warren’s mother, Patsy, was out in her garden planting garlic. This was on the Eastern Shore of Maryland where winters are mild, but we had moved there from West Virginia, and gardening at that time of year seemed strange to me. But these days here on the Cape, planting garlic and doing a little garden clean up on New Years Eve no longer seems strange. We haven’t had a really cold New Year’s Eve since 2017. But the year before and after 2017, the temps were back to mild. I’m listing my Falmouth weather recordings since 2016 here in case you are curious.
2024 Mostly Sunny; Temp 49, Low 41 degrees F
2023 Weather: Partly Sunny; High 39, Low 31 F
2022 Overcast and Rainy: High 56, Low 46 degrees F
2021 Mostly Cloudy, Some Sunshine in PM; High Temp 45, Low Temp 43 degrees F
2020 Rainy Morning, Then Overcast; High 50, Low 29 Degrees
2019 Dreary and Misty; High 38, Low 28 degrees F
2018 RAIN, High 53, Low 38 degrees F
2017 Sunny and Cold; High 22, Low 7 degrees F
2016 Partly Sunny; High 50, Low 30 degrees F
I ran some errands and stopped at Heather and Jed’s around lunch time. Jed was at the boat trying to get it covered before winter truly sets in, but everyone else was at home and inside. When I mentioned that I had been working outside doing a little gardening, the “Oh, I haven’t planted my garlic yet” light bulb went off in Heather’s head, so she grabbed some garlic and went out to the planting boxes on the deck. I then realized that I hadn’t planted garlic either. November is the time most people plant it here, but this was a busy November with a lot of traveling and no time for garlic. So, I went home and planted my garlic as well. And as I did, I thought of Patsy Decker all those years ago planting garlic on New Year’s Day.
Other than the little bit of garden work I did today, I spent a lot of time thinking about the many things I want to accomplish in 2025. Before I go to bed tonight, I’ll pare down that list and write my to do list of big 2025 projects before I go to bed. But this is different from making a resolution. I don’t make resolutions any longer because I have one that I will need to work on every day of my life. On New Year’s Eve in 2016, I was in New Hampshire with my friends Detta and Tom Porat. Detta and I stayed up until midnight trying to solve the world’s problems. Then, just after midnight, I turned on my computer to write my log. I opened an email from Heather, Jed, and the boys sharing a wish for the new year: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” (Mahatma Gandhi) That is a lifelong resolution and I’m sticking with it.
