September 14, 2016 - Losing People

One of the sadder parts of life is losing people. Both in the sense of having loved ones die, but also losing people from your life.

I think we lose people for lots of reasons, people move away, we move on or events drive us apart.

I recently found out that a friend of my brother's, and to a lesser degree, of mine, had passed a year ago. I regret not making more of an effort to connect and catch up - and now it's too late. To be fair, she had her own family she was spending time with, and I had my problems to deal with. But I'm not sure that is a good enough reason to have not made the effort.

All our lives are filled with people we used to know: former neighbours, classmates and work friends. Not to mention the people we meet when out socializing. With electronic communication and the internet it is easier than ever before to be connected, but we aren't.  Social media is not for everyone, it is a fine line to choose what to share publicly, and what to keep private.

At any given point in life, we stay close to those who mean the most to us and the people we spend the most time with. In school, it is classmates and in the workforce it is co-workers.

But we leave school, and many of us work in more than one place in our lives. So, how do we choose who to stay in contact with?

For many, I think we are happy to have a general idea what is going on in someone else's life. We feel that the knowledge is the same as being close, but without the personal contact,we become little more than stalkers.

Somehow, I feel better about losing someone in my life than I do about becoming a stalker and observing someone else's life.

Life is best on the field, not in the stands.

September 5, 2016 - Labor Day and so much work to do

That title pretty much says it all - there was so much that I had wanted to get done this summer, and it feels I have greatly fallen behind.

We got four loads of mulch for the garden, and I still have a half of one load sitting in the driveway. It has to be gone before winter, but I can't get it into the garden until more weeding takes place, so I can spread it among the plants. So, weeding then shovel mulch onto the cart, take cart into garden and then shovel mulch off of cart.

Some of the outside door trim needs painting. A bit of it was cracking, so we started scraping the worst parts. Now, I need to finish scraping door trim and the trim around the building - making it look worse before it looks better. Then prime, then paint. Not a job that will be done and dusted in an afternoon.

Some of the trees need trimming. I've done a few, but I think the ones by the driveway will be next - they are hanging over the drive (nice) but also drooping down almost on top of the car (not so nice). So I need to get out the pruning saw and then clear up afterwards.

The raised bed in the vegetable garden needs cleaning up. It was a successful summer in the tomato and spaghetti squash departments, but they were planted too close together (a lesson for next year!) and need to be trimmed and cleaned up. And the excess plant matter, leaves and stems, need to be taken to the compost.

We have an old apple tree on the property that produces lots of apples, but hasn't been taken care of for many years. Time to figure out what to do with that - whether it needs trimming, spraying or whatever else you do to apple trees to keep them healthy and the fruit edible.

At least the mowing is not out of control.