Life cycles

 I think for Lent I should have given up Zillow. 

We have decided .... nothing. I spend a lot of time scrolling through Zillow and Google Earth. 

Both houses mentioned in the past post haven't sold, and I still haven't been able to commit to them or any other. I'm starting to drive my husband bonkers. The bigger, more expensive house is probably off the list. My husband has shifted his preference to a different neighborhood, and that one needs more work than is in our budget. The Tudor is still on the market. It didn't sell right away as we thought it might. My husband really wanted to make an offer, but I was hesitant, even though I can see us living there.  It's the kind of house that suits our eclectic style. It has a wonderful 3 season porch where we'd likely spend most of our time. But the back yard is tiny - and dominated by a large evergreen - maybe a hemlock? It shades the back corner and probably makes the soil acidic. Additionally, we'd have to add a second full bath, probably in the basement, and reconfigure the dining room into an office/guest bed and the family room into the dining room.  And I can't decide if our living room furniture fits Tudor aesthetic. So get new, you say! But still I feel like this house is priced a little high for this neighborhood.

In the meantime, a couple other options in that same neighborhood have come on the market. Both need substantial work. One really isn't an option - too much work for too much money. The other one is now my husband's favorite. It has a bigger yard and is located just slightly further into the neighborhood away from the busy street you turn off of to enter the community.  

But this one also would be a total redo. Even more substantial than the first one, and this one is even smaller, although it has an attached garage that my husband has an idea to turn into a family room. I have a hard time envisioning the completed house. I can see how the tiny kitchen and dining room could be combined, and the back porch rehabbed, but I have a hard time imagining how to make the teeny bathrooms bigger and how to make the dark front entry brighter. In addition, at one time a row of ten evergreens were planted along the back fence. These are now towering skinny, scraggly trees that look like a hazard in a big storm. They should probably be replaced. The juniper bushes in the front are tree-sized and need to be removed.  If the garage is turned into a family room, a new garage would have to be built.  It's a huge project, almost like building from scratch, and I don't know if I'm up for that. I can't even pick a dress for my son's wedding; how could I make the decisions for a total house remodel? Considering how crazy the markets are right now, building materials may be unobtainable any way.

So should we go back to the original house we were attracted to? Maybe it is sitting there waiting for us. My initial hesitation about its small yard and small kitchen could be overcome because it is the best option for now. Or maybe we need to let go of the dream to live in a more urban area in an older home and just get the big house in the suburbs, like what we have now.  Fortunately, we have a back-up plan: my husband has found a place to rent for 6 months to a year.  

But enough about the house. I haven't written enough about the fact that we are grandparents! This is by far the highlight of the year.  Our little granddaughter is a smiley, round doll baby. She is so easy and good! Our son and daughter-in-law just took her on a long trek to see her great-grandparents, and apparently, she was a perfect traveler. She slept long stretches and smiled and cooed for her great-grandparents, who needed some sunshiney baby time because my father-in-law had just had surgery for a cancer and had some complications. We are praying for him to have a full recovery, although it sounds like he may need a second surgery to make sure they got everything. 

Meanwhile school has been going great, which makes it harder to tell everyone that I'm leaving soon. But after Easter the message will go out. In the meantime, I am trying to enjoy these moments, even as I obsess about houses and have a constantly growing bulletin of to-dos cycling in my brain.  After all these moves, I know we'll continue to find community and purpose wherever we land, but it's never easy to say goodbye.  Even if we were staying, things change. Other people come and go - here we have seen some startling, saddening changes among our friend group lately in between death and divorce.  

And so we start again.

Our Google Earth journey of addresses, estimated. Need more Pacific NW.

The latest

March came in like a lion, but it is now lamblike. The season of Lent has arrived with sunny skies and mild temperatures. Meanwhile memories of a frigid February are fading, as signs of spring brighten each morning. 

Taking a moment to reflect on Lent since I haven't written in a bit. This Lent has some privations out of my control - my husband is working 1000 miles away. Most of my kids are grown. Teaching takes up all my time - except the hour just wasted deleting junk email and sifting through old message attachments in order to avoid having to pay extra storage fees because we have maxed out the gigabites we get for free after 20 some years. This is the sort of activity I should give up for Lent, and to a certain extent, I have greatly limited my media use. I've been intending to accompany my sacrifice of media time with in increase in prayer, spiritual reading and acts of charity-  I have plenty of need to grow in holiness in other ways.

For the meantime, I have resolved to follow Pope Francis's request and give up most social media (counting this as a journal, not social media). I am still checking in occasionally to see if my kids share anything, but I trying to sacrifice the doom scroll. I need to accompany this with giving up reading the Wall Street Journal cover to cover. . . 

All these things! Cutting back on them all should free me for more time to read and to worship; instead all of my "extra" time has been spent looking at Zillow.

Yes, our move is a reality. Since I last wrote over 2 months ago, my husband has taken a new job up north, about 2 hours from our first grandbaby and 3 from my parents. We are doing the "Geo-bach" thing, as they call it in the Navy - he's in South Bend, and I'm finishing the school year in Texas. It's not ideal, but two months have flown by, so I assume the next 3 will fly.  Our plan is to move north after the last day of school, our son's wedding, and our nephew's wedding. And maybe the 4th of July... 

I am relishing every day here. The weather is beautiful. School is going well. Our friends are wonderful. I feel guilty that my husband is living in a tiny condo surrounded by college students who have a very different schedule than he does - and the walls are thin enough he can hear them. 

We spent half of last week with him on a house hunting mission over spring break.  We found some options, but I am feeling really hesitant to commit. Meanwhile, my husband would put an offer in on the first house he looked at if I let him.  Right now we have 2 good options that we need to act on if we are going to make an offer. A third option has my favorite yard, but it is a mid-century home stuck in the mid-century (not yet modern...) and though it is on a nice street, it is hemmed in by busier streets. It's been on the market almost 3 months, so we are passing on that one. 

The other two aren't on the market yet. They are both older homes and both need some work to make them work for our family. The first is a very, very cute Tudor that is updated with excellent taste, but it is only a 3 bedroom. We would want to renovate a dining room + laundry room into a first floor primary suite, add an apartment over the garage and connect the garage to the house with a greenhouse-like breezeway. I would also like to open up the kitchen into the next room which now is set up as a den but would make a better dining room because it is next to the kitchen. 

This house would work for us, and it is nicely appointed and cute. Very Tudor living room, though, with exposed beams and a pitched roof, and a narrow staircase leading upstairs to the bedrooms. A hidden tiny room off the primary BR could function as an extra sleeping space. The stairs are intimidating to me - if our parents came to live with us, these stairs would be treacherous. Same with the stairs to the finished basement. It is not a house for elderly right now.

Also, it is closer to downtown, which is seeing a revival right now, but has historically been pretty sketchy. This particular house is in a neighborhood  that has been insulated from local crime, but it is closer to the cross street that signals the end of the less - crime ridden neighborhood.

The other house is close to campus where we had initially targeted living, although many of the houses are turning to Air BNBs, which is great when you need extra overflow, but may disrupt the feel of the neighborhood as a communicy. This house is expensive, but needs updates, mostly paint, but also windows, another bathroom, and the basement redone. Add a kitchen gut to make it work for our lifestyle.

So what to do???

Wait to see if something better comes up? South Bend isn't actually a haven of cute houses.  Is it worthwhile to wait and hope something at least more in line with our preferences, or is a ? I said last time that I wasn't going to get in a pressure situation, but here we are.  It's basically neighborhood vs. renovation.

                             

Reading in Review

 This was a low reading year for me. I'm embarrassed to admit that a lot of that is because I spent time scrolling when I could have been reading - waiting rooms, bathrooms, lines, after dinner check ins. We also watched more TV this year - or I did. I used to skip out on tv time but this year I sat down more with the fam because movie nights are more limited. Unfortunately, very little of what we watched is worth mentioning. "All Creatures Great and Small" is definitely our favorite worthwhile series. "Only Murders in the Building" was entertaining last winter. We watched a little "Abbott Elementary," which I found funnier than the rest of my family.  Some Fr. Brown mysteries, "The Bear." We rewatched some Marvel movies and Star Wars and ET and some other classics like "Return to Me" and "Shawshank Redemption" - both a little too old -  with the youngest for the first time.  I'd rather watch something more redemptive, but working on classics of a sort. 

Why else didn't I read as much? Can I claim I read a lot of the newspaper?- the WSJ, of course. I spend about an hour at least every Sunday reading the weekend Journal and catching up on features from daily editions that I didn't have time to get to. 

I also spent more time rereading books for school - The Hobbit and The Giver, Fever 1793 and The Witch of Blackbird Pond.  I previewed The Outsiders and skimmed The of Anne Frank. But did I waste time looking for reading selections online? I did, yes I did. 

And did time I spent grading and looking for resources also eat away at my reading time? But of course.

So the sad news is that I only read 48 books this year. Fewer by 20 than what I read last year, although I'm pretty sure I forgot to write some books down on my list. I appreciate this list for that very reason. In fact, I know I read something to and from my mom and dad's house at Christmas - but what was it? My November and December reads are missing, and though they are the most recent, I can't remember for the life of me what I read. It's really bothering me. I did spend a lot of our travel time catching up with grading, but I also know I did some reading on the road trip. 

I also started some books I didn't finish. This is the case with a couple of spiritual books I started to read. I subscribe to and read Plough, the magazine published by the Bruderhof. I really enjoy its mix of culture, faith, and commentary, but this is my second year of subscribing, so I might move on to a new magazine next year. 

Most of the books I wrote down were children's classics: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Little Women, The Anne of Green Gables books.  All of these were young adult books, but thoroughly enjoyed by this adult. They were probably my favorite reads of the year.

I did not accomplish a read of a long and thick classic. No Dickens, no Trollope, no Tolstoy. And really we only read part one of Little Women. 

But now a review. Of the 48 books: 

• 38 were novels
• 5 were read alouds - a habit that has slowed down, sadly
• 15 were children's chapter books
• 6 were advice books
• 0 spiritual books. I started but did not finish a couple spiritual books this year. A poverty
• 1 book of poetry, although I did skim some books of poetry from the library
• 1 Collection of essays
• 16 were rereads, mostly the children's books
• No local authors, unless you count S. E. Hinton, who was from Tulsa.
• 6 were by BIPOC authors 
• 10 were nonfiction. 

Of the 38 books of fiction.

• Few count as classics - mostly children's books: Where the Red Fern Grows and The Hobbit. The Witch of Blackbird Pond, A Little Princess, The Anne books, the Twain books

My favorite nonfiction book: The Anxious Generation, although the Vanderbilt book was fascinating.

Favorite novels of the year: Huckleberry Finn and James by Percival Everett, although I found Absolution absorbing. 

Least favorite:  Why did I read so many self help books on aging?

Goals for next year: 

Less media, more books, more reading aloud, more reading widely. 

And now to read before falling asleep. 

Looking forward, looking back

 Time for the annual look back - look forward post!  I think I've already quit my New Year's resolutions - or haven't started them yet. I know there's a lot of back and forth about the wisdom of making resolutions, and I suppose I could do a little science experiment and go back over the past 12 years or so of writing a beginning of the year post to assess if I've made any lasting changes. The results would probably be mixed. I know every year I resolve to get more sleep and drink more water, but I haven't yet succeeded. Note that growth mindset "yet" - I'm still trying! But I think in other ways I have made some progress - I like to think I'm a little better at letting things go, at releasing the illusion of control. I like to think that years of saying goodbye have made me a little more grateful for friendship, for beauty, for the time we have. Maybe that's just age.

One thing that is different this year - I have been feeling my age. My feet hurt constantly, my cholesterol is up, my joints are stiff, and my vision is terrible.  I try to avoid looking in the mirror at my wrinkles and gray hair. Worst of all, I catch myself thinking about the kids in ways that are outdated; I have to remind myself they won't live with us any more. For instance, I cleaned out the linen closet and realized I don't need to keep as many twin bed sheet sets and pillows anymore because no one is having sleepovers anymore.  

In between aging and working full time, my fitness resolution is a little different this year because I have to be more intentional about things like getting my heart rate up and stretching. I used to do those things without thinking.  Last year I ran very little. This year I will likely run hardly at all. But I do need to find something to get my heart rate up. My most recent dr's appointment revealed elevated cholesterol, and I firmly believe it is less from a change in diet than a steep decline in vigorous exercise that elevates my heart rate. The solution - plan the time, realizing it doesn't have to be running. I did "Just Dance" with my daughter today and was breathing heavy by the end.

Also new this year: fewer carbs.  Until the last year or so, I was able to eat carbs without ill effect. Now I don't burn the calories I used to burn exercising. The upside is that I don't crave the carbohydrates I used to crave. I started the day with a bowl or two of cereal every day for years and couldn't imagine cutting back. Now I'm lucky if I eat breakfast.  Even so, I've gained weight and lost muscle. Time to cut back on carbs and sugar, woe!  

And of course, drink more water and get more sleep...

In regard to those other pillars of an integrated life - faith, family, academics, and community - I'm really embracing the pilgrims of hope theme for the year promulgated by Pope Francis. We'll be in Rome for our son's wedding this May, so we'll get to experience the Jubilee year opening of the doors. I want to really do some preparation of heart and mind for this, although I haven't really set out how/what to read, etc. We also are talking about making a trip to Lourdes as a part of that European vacation. We were married at Our Lady of Lourdes almost 29 years ago. It seems fitting to make a pilgrimage of thanksgiving. 

In between preparing for that trip and for moving, I will be busy, but with my husband starting his new job, life around the house will be quieter.  I'm hoping to use some of the time to do some of the volunteer things and travel things I've been meaning to do with our 10 year old.  I want to go out with the Mobile Loaves and Fish truck sponsored by a parish near us that serves the hungry in our community and serve donuts on Sundays. That seems kind of simple, but it's a job the church is always asking for help with. 

The other thing I want to shoehorn in with my daughter is visiting a few more of the state parks around here before we move, especially Enchanted Rock, Caddo Lake, and Palo Duro and Big Bend if I can find the time. Enchanted Rock should be easy to do. The other three are farther away, and we'll also be doing some traveling to see the kids/husband some weekends.   

Before I finish up the school year, I want to finish writing out a curriculum map. There was nothing for me when I got here, and working on the vertical alignment of the ELA curriculum has been a goal for the school this year. I'm still trying to match up standards of learning with units for the two grades I teach. It makes me sad to thing here I am finally getting a good handle on our goals and how to reach them when it's time to go. Will I return to the classroom next year? That's something I'm praying about this year. 

I'll also be praying for our house to sell and the grace to trust something will work out with housing if it doesn't. The high interest rates are discouraging.  If we don't sell this house, we'll have a hard time financing a new one, and the rental market is saturated.  Finding and financing housing is always the most stressful part of moving.  The move here in 2021 was particularly stressful because of the post-pandemic shortages in housing and low interest rates that artificially inflated the price of housing. We'll surely lose some and maybe a lot of money on this house.

But blessedly, we have a cushion, and while the financial hit would be uncomfortable, it's survivable. The fires in California are a tragic reminder of how quickly possessions can be lost - and how a house/wealth/stuff isn't what makes life worth living.  Not to diminish the importance of a home, shelter, mementoes, roots - the losses are devastating. But the human heart is resilient and many, hopefully most, if not all, of the people suffering catastrophic losses will find the support and inner determination to start again, even if somewhere else, not in such a lovely but liable place. Or perhaps in the same place, just with more protections - personal hydrants, sprinkler systems, etc. - or more agility to pivot/evacuate quickly.  I was reading about how some of the very wealthy people impacted by the fire have second and third homes to retreat to, but the working class people are struggling to find lodging because landlords are price gouging and charging exorbitant rents.  On the other hand, there are just as many stories about people opening up room in their homes. May the generous side of human nature continue to win out. 

All of these things are cause for prayer.  I'll be praying for answers to big questions, trying to start new habits, find a new home, discern what our newest iteration of life will look like, while at the same time trying to soak up the goodness of our place here, to spend quality time with the friends here, to get to some of the places we meant to visit, to make the most of what we have here before we go. And of course praying for the needs of loved ones and strangers in need. 

New Year, New Beginnings

Perhaps my New Year's resolution should be to post more often - or to just give up this blog. Blogs are out of style, our life has changed, etc. But I do like coming back to this place and reading about what I thought - something I never do with diaries.  I also like that in an era when everything is constantly changing, this little corner of the internet remains the same. I probably should not say that too loud or Blogger may disappear, but here we are.  One of my new year's resolutions is to try to update at least what I'm reading once a month. 

I really didn't mean to let almost three months slip past before posting again.  My lack of posting isn't really due to being busy; I've been busy, but not any busier than I ever was.  Rather, we've had a lot of things simmering that took up time and thought. 

First, the biggest blessing of the year: Our first granddaughter was born! She has been long hoped for, so we are especially grateful for her sweet perfection. She is a real doll baby - weighing in a 9 pounds and 14 ounces at birth a just before Christmas, she is perfectly formed and has beautiful color, a full head of dark Italian hair, soft round cheeks, and the sweetest little rosebud mouth. We are in love! The whole family is thrilled to have a baby in the family again. Everyone was eager to hold her, and she was content to be passed around. Our son and his wife haven't stopped beaming. 

The other big news is that we will be moving again next summer. This wasn't entirely planned.  Just when we were feeling settled at home in Texas, the time has come to pull the roots up again. My husband has just been hired into his dream job. It seems almost too good, too smooth, to be true. Doors opened in a way that suggests Providence at work, except that he has worked hard and well for this opportunity. I am really proud of what he has accomplished here in a short amount of time. The notes from the people that work for him attest to his leadership.  He worked extremely hard to improve the working conditions for a lot of people. My daughter's friend, who is interning in the office, said people cried when he announced he was leaving. He cried. He is going to his dream job, but he is leaving behind a place that almost ate him alive, but now he has them eating breakfast tacos and donuts and birthday cakes... He prioritized the people who work for him - as well the faculty and students he serves- and they appreciated that.  

It is hard to leave a place where you have had such a positive impact, but I know he will continue to be just as dedicated to building morale at this new job. 

The best part of the new job is that we'll just be a couple hours from our new grandbaby and our son and daughter-in-law. We'll be 31/2 hours from my parents and siblings. We'll be 90 minutes from a major city and airports to which our coastal kids can travel easily - and close to a small local airport if needed.

The sad part is we'll be farther from my in-laws, my husband's siblings, and my brother.  We'll have to leave the wonderful community we've found here. We'll have to sell, probably at a loss, this party house that I've had a love/hate relationship with, but I've come to appreciate.  As much as I find the pool a labor and money drain, it has been luxurious to have one in the hot summers. It took me several years to learn to live larger, and now we'll likely return to simpler accommodations. No doubt, I'll miss the comforts like plenty of room in the kitchen and living spaces and a big pantry. We'll miss the great sunsets, the space for games and hanging out together, the mild winters, the view of the forest preserve, and the wonderful neighbors who are happy to help with the dog and the trash when we are gone or to join us for a happy hour or driveway party when we are home. It's a sociable place.

We'll also both miss our jobs here, even though we both experienced challenges our first year or so. I wouldn't claim to be an expert, but I've learned a lot about teaching in general and about middle schoolers and about myself. It turns out I enjoy middle schoolers. They make me laugh. 

Why is saying goodbye so hard? Readers may find it surprising that I feel so sad about leaving when I was not exactly a fan of Texas initially. There are still some things I find off putting about this place, but it has a distinct ethos. Texas knows and loves itself.  The terrain is often stark, but also startling, especially in this hill country area, and when the wildflowers are blooming.  The people are brash but loving.  We have again made wonderful friends, some of whom I haven't told yet because it is so hard to say goodbye, and the move isn't imminent.  My husband will start soon, but our 10 year old and I will finish up the school year before packing up after our second son's wedding at the end of May. 

The irony is that we are moving to a state I couldn't wait to leave when I was a teenager. I'm sure we'll find our spot and our people and settle into a rhythm and routine in this place, but I'm dreading the work of moving and starting over again, if I am honest with myself, even though I'm thrilled for my husband. I'm sad for my daughter and her best friend three doors down. I'm sad for my kids who went to high school here and made good friends. They won't know people when they come home for breaks. I'm sad for my in-laws, whom we've seen more of in the last couple of years than we did in the previous decade.  I'm sad for my older kids who like to visit us here, where we have plenty of space and there are lots of fun things to do and see out and about. We aren't exactly going to a cultural mecca for our next stop. 

This move will likely be for a longer duration, even though I dream of settling in a cute little town, maybe coastal, maybe in New England, maybe in the mountains. I don't know where I hope we retire, but I hope it is someplace with beautiful views and cultural opportunities and good trails nearby - sounds a lot like California or South Carolina or Maine - or our back yard here. I hope I am able to conquer my inability to stay, to attach, to feel at home, to at last find the place where I can finally feel that way. Maybe it will be an airstream trailer we knock about in to go and visit our kids and grandkids wherever they land. 

Now to go back to pretending we are staying here for a few more months. I'm hoping to wait until after spring break to talk about it with our friends and neighbors here.  I want to soak up our days here as fully as possible before they fade into memory.  

Flooding and Farewells

A flashback post I never finished plus some wandering reflections:

Near the end of August, we dropped our sixth child off at college. These move-in weekends are physically and emotionally draining, and having done it before doesn't make it any easier.  When you say goodbye after unpacking all their stuff and dropping another $$$ on cheap furnishings and toiletries from Target, it feels like saying goodbye to a childhood that really ended several years ago, but now is final. You know the fledgling adult isn't really ever coming back to stay, although she will return at holiday breaks and in the summer, and maybe a year or so after graduating . . . But she'll be on her own even then, though grateful for your caregiving and dinner making and laundry doing.  We've been through this now with her five siblings. They no longer need our help or oversight as they go about their business working summer jobs and hanging with friends and enjoying sleeping in comfortable beds before they go back to dorm mattresses or ratty apartment furniture. 

When we first dropped off the older kids, the goodbye didn't quite sink in. I thought we'd have holidays and summers; I didn't think about what happened after college. I had young children at home who still expected their siblings at the table.  But then the older kids stopped coming home - first they worked at camps, then they got internships and did service projects and worked. They went to visit new friends, or their friends came to see us (everyone wanted to come to San Diego), and they stayed out late so that we barely saw them when they were home. 

It's a slow process of detachment after all that attachment work when they were babies. 

Our daughter is going to school in Greenville, South Carolina.  As everyone knows, that area felt the effects of Hurricane Helene, although not so hard as the area a couple hours north where my husband's cousins have a place, which my husband designed. Just a month after we dropped our daughter off, campus closed for a week because the power was out and then it took time for the internet to return. Can't have school without internet!

The devastation from the flooding in the mountain towns north of Greenville is hard to picture to outsiders. The clean up is still going on. We almost flew out to help our cousins clean up their place. Their storage container washed away with some kayaks, a generator, tools, camping stuff, other flotsam and jetsam.  But there wasn't gas and supplies for the people there, so for us to come and use more would not have been helpful.  

Instead our school had a bake sale, and the students could make a donation in order to wear something other than their uniform. The donations went to a school near Asheville that was damaged. Over $5000 was raised. Another school family had a connection to a school damaged by Hurricane Milton in Florida, so our school split the funds to send to both schools. 

While $5000 is an incredible amount to raise in a bake sale, it only goes a little way in the clean up process. 

And it is like half a penny compared to what was spent on this past election. It hurts my head to think of the billions spent on advertising and marketing and all of the stuff thrown away after an election, and all the other ways money is spent on elections.  I saw somewhere an estimate of $11 billion dollars.  How many ways could that money have been spent to truly build community? 

In all these things, a long view is necessary- a long view of our lives with our children, a long view of recovery from natural disasters, a long view of politics and the lives of nations.  Knowing that life will bring both joys and sorrows over time doesn't minimize the feelings of sorrow and loss and frustration, but it reminds us that happiness will return, things will change, life will go on. The acorns will sprout and oak trees will grow. We might just have to wait a long time.

 

A new season

 This morning cool breezes greeted us as my husband and I stepped out the front door to walk the dog.  It's the second week of October. September is relegated to recent memory, with summer now the distant past. It doesn't seem fair that time should pass so quickly.

Yet the temperatures don't think it's summer. It's still in the 90s in the afternoons here. The impatiens are still blooming, but struggling with the lack of rain in this part of the country. Grass and leaves are turning brown but only because of hot and dry conditions.  I've given up watering my garden, although the basil and peppers haven't completely dried up like the tomatoes. I'm going to give up on tomatoes. Year after year I plant them, water them, weed them, and receive a small handful of fruit in return.  

I don't even really like tomatoes, but I envy the shrubby plants with stems drooping from the weight of laden branches that are browning in my parents' garden. Their tomatoes are rotting on the vine because they can't eat them all, and the neighbor's similarly have plenty. And they do nothing but stick seedlings in the ground! I labor for anemic tomatoes. The climate, the soil, the sun and rain, all are unpropitious for tomato growing. 

Instead here I can grow rosemary, peppers to hot to eat, tradescantia, pots of aloe. Lavender seems to survive, if not quite thrive. The shrubbery -boxwoods, nandina and gaura - grow with little care. And the lantana thrives and strives to take over the entire flower bed. 

But now, in mid October the plants are starting to slow their growth in response to the shortening days. The plumeria in pots still smells as fragrant as ever, and the five lemons on my potted lemon tree are finally turning yellow. One started to rot so I squeezed half in my juice, and one I picked too soon because I needed some citrus to squeeze on apples shredded for apple muffins - a recipe that only partially worked. 

The bats are back, swooping over the pool for snacks at dusk. Coyotes are singing regularly at night, curling the hair on the back of our little dog, causing him to growl huskily deep in his throats, as if he'd actually frighten one of his wild cousins instead of being a tasty snack. 

I have had little time for reflection, despite the fact that this time of year seems to inspire nostalgia and revisiting the past. Some of that is due to the start of the school year and the busyness of planning, grading, working. We also traveled two weekends in a row to Indiana, one for a Notre Dame football game - and a mini reunion with almost all of our kids (missing 2: the freshman in college, whom we had just dropped off two weeks prior, and the son who works an hourly wage job who couldn't take off work). We also revisited my parents and our son and daughter-in-law a couple weeks ago to honor my father's birthday and to celebrate at a baby shower the impending arrival of our first grandchild. This is something of a secret, but since this blog is also something of a secret, I'll record here my great excitement at the prospect of a new baby in the family! We have been hoping and praying for this baby!

Fitting that in fall we should celebrate a grandfather's birthday and a baby's eventual birth day.  As we celebrate the fruits of the garden labor in the season of harvest, some seeds fall to the ground to take root and bring forth new life.  And hopefully some seeds of wisdom will pass down to this next generation and bear fruit. Life continues to flourish, despite the harbingers of doom in the news and online.  And before this month is over, I'm going to try to coax a little more life out of my raised garden bed by planting a winter garden of greens. We'll see if they can defy the odds or survive and give us some good vitamins and minerals this winter ...

Flashback to college days. I still have this t-shirt and almost wore it since 90s fashion is back in...

It was so hot that the ice from the coolers served a new purpose.

A quick stop at the Chicago Art Institute while waiting for our flight. It's surprising how much you can see in 25 minutes. Not recommended as a rule, but worth it when you only have so much time and a free ticket...

This was the picture she wanted most to see.

Tasty shower treats.

Cousins

Still watching soccer.