Lehman's Country Life

If I had only one word to describe the end of summer it would be “rollercoaster.”  The good, the bad and the ridiculous all seemed to converge at my house, and as the Labor Day weekend drew the summer season to a close, I found I had a surprising capacity for enjoying even the less-than-great times that August-into-September brought.

Among the blessings that went above and beyond anything I could have imagined was when the same friend from work who had come and bush-hogged my land a couple of weeks ago, showed up with a friend of his who’s a skilled mechanic, and the two of them loaded up and took custody of my tractor.  It was hauled it off to the Barn of Generous, Skilled Mechanics, and returned a week later running like a top, with the only “invoice” a muttered estimate for parts alone, that I can cover with a bit under half the money in my Tractor Maintenance fund.

To paraphrase one of my favorite radio financial advisors who says that “goals are dreams that show up in work clothes,” sometimes angels show up in jeans and sweaty T-shirts.
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As the summer comes and goes, it is difficult in a number of ways to believe it was twelve months ago (July 4th weekend) that I helped my roommate of several years move out into her new home, and set my sights on learning to make my way, on my own. I knew I was going to have to reexamine every habit, every assumption, if I were going to not only make ends meet but make the most of my solitude and independence. At the time, the burgeoning piles of boxes that moved in as storage spaces were emptied was daunting; but the clutter they caused was more than offset by the blessed quiet.

I had done my best, back in early July of ‘08, to stockpile provisions, tighten up my cash flow to include money for household and vehicle Murphy-isms, and promised myself that I would not let the practical concerns of holding a home together keep me from my spiritual practice and creative growth. Have I been able to do that? Yes, for the most part, though of course there have been frustrations.
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I have rewritten this entry for my Lehman’s friends several times, never quite feeling as though I can convey what a mixture of emotion this Spring brings with it.  On the one hand, there is the purely joyful and timely:  the beginning of March, marked by the lionine ferocity of a major snow storm, Bluebirds waiting each morning for their ration of mealworms to make up for a food supply that is either blanketed in white or frozen solid; (as I write, one of those selfsame little balls of color sits at the corner of a back porch roof gable, enjoying the last warmth of a setting sun); the landscape tub by the front steps, cleaned of the remnants of last year’s tomato vine, revealing emerging tips of tulips I had forgotten were tucked into the soil at Summer’s end; the countdown on my calendar to a solid week I will take as vacation time to perform that age-old tradition, Spring Cleaning.
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It’s been a busy few months since I wrote last, and I have some useful things to share; but before I start, let me say a sincere thanks to those folks who took the time to email me personally, asking when I’d be back on the Lehman’s newsletter. Your kind words and enthusiasm are more encouraging than I can express, and I can report that while silent, I have not been idle.

At right around January 4th (the 6-month mark of this journey) I took stock of how I was doing with my food, supplies and expenses. So far, I’m doing very well with canned goods, not quite as well but still pretty good with frozen things, passable in the personal care and household cleaners, but nearly back to the dreaded “S” word (shopping) for paper goods. I think I mentioned back in late summer that I surmised this might be the case, but I still feel pretty good about where that puts me with a target of going a year without many major shopping trips. One of the things I’ve done to increase my accountability will probably strike some as borderline OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, for those who still believe that folks like me “just have their quirks”). I’ve begun labeling the date I open almost everything so as to keep track of how long it takes me to go through it.
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I always think of November as a sort of “gateway” month – a special time between the last of the October harvest activities and the onset of true winter in December.  It’s a time of cleaning up the garden and putting it to bed, pruning the roses and flowering trees, having vehicles winterized and perhaps even changing to snow tires, pulling out the sweaters and tweeds, and of course, shifting from pastimes that avoid producing heat in the house to those that definitely do, on purpose.  “Leaf Peeping” brings out the photography novice in me, and a rare major grocery shopping trip produces a frozen turkey.

This month, however, also held a rather startling realization this year.

Journal Entry November 4th – Election Day

Got out early to vote – home by 9:00 A.M.  Started measuring for the new window quilts and got sidetracked looking out at the most amazing color.  Spent some time with the 35 mm and hopefully, got some shots that will faithfully reproduce the light that the trees seemed to have, shining out from inside themselves.  Between these and a half-dozen taken at lunchtime this past week in Dover, I’m nearly through a whole roll of film.

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The Notebook

If you’ve been with me since the beginning of this series, you may remember that among my goals for my financial health was to see if I could get what had become a worrisome power bill under control. Along with releasing the financial boon of splitting expenses as my roommate of several years moved out, I was also hoping that releasing the bad habits that were part of the package would net me some measurable improvement once lights were not left blazing, the refrigerator door not held open while a potential meal was decided upon, and a second refrigerator moved out and to the new kitchen across town.

Now, depending upon where you live and how your house is constructed, $120 may not sound like a large bill to power a 2700 sq ft home; but after the extra expense I had gone to for thicker walls (and hence higher R value insulation) and high-quality windows, I didn’t like the look of it, and I set my lip in a firm line, determined to do better. First up, along with letting the cats eat in a laundry room lit by a 60-Watt pinup lamp (rather than six 75-Watt overhead recessed lights) was allowing an extra five minutes each morning, going around closing insulated curtains and lowering matchstick blinds on the sides of the house where the sun would be shining while I was at work.
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It is a perfect late summer morning – a Saturday, to be exact, and my favorite day of the week. The front and back doors are both propped wide open and a fresh, cool breeze flows through the full depth of the house. Once I’ve disposed of the day’s obligatory small rodent that the cats have dutifully left on the back porch, Barney is free to wander in and out and pick a vantage point to keep an eye on me as I set up for the first round of canning I’ve done in years. The Ball canning book and a copy of Stocking Up III were among the first of the cookbooks I unpacked, and they will remain out in a prominent place now until late Fall.

As the 20 qt stainless stockpot full of water approaches the boil, I slip the first dozen or so perfect, ripe Roma tomatoes in to blanch, and reflect on the cases of commercially canned goods I have collected over the past few months in a room set aside upstairs for storage. When I lived in hurricane-prone North Carolina, I made a practice of keeping at least a few weeks’ worth of basics, including food, paper goods, and some 40 gallons of well water in labeled glass jugs. When Hurricane Fran swept through the Piedmont, downing trees across roadways and knocking out power for days on end, I had everything I and my animals needed and the only real compromise was bathing with water dipped out of the spa tub (yeah, that was really hard….)
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I was reminded, as I brought in yet another box of books and other belongings that have been in storage for several years, of an old Gary Larsen “Far Side” cartoon. A frowsy, bespectacled woman in a housedress is pushing an upright vacuum cleaner along a path through a thick jungle, and the caption reads something to the effect that she is wary because “Nature abhors a vacuum.” Perhaps my front room presented too tempting a void for the laws of physics. Is it possible, I wondered, that this is the same room where just a few days previous, I had actually taken the front panel off the piano and vacuumed its long-silent wires? where I moved a reading chair and floor lamp into position as the only other pieces of furniture and measured the window bay, envisioning actually being able to have a Christmas tree this year?
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Journal Entry, Thursday, July 03, 2008
Clean, pack, label, lift, repeat.  Not exactly a shampoo bottle, but there is a sameness that is noticeable long about the fortieth time and it’s becoming my mantra.  The boxes that the admin assistant at work saved and sent home with me (bless you, Valda), which seemed far too numerous before, are in danger of becoming too few!

We are in Day 7 of the 9 that each of us has off during which we have committed to getting my roommate of several years moved to a new house.  The layers of Oscar Madison-ness are being peeled away, and although the herniated discs in the bottom of my back are reminding me I should be taking more breaks, the suddenly emerging empty spaces urge me on.
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You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.”
-Ziggy by Tom Wilson

Apart from the flowery, beautiful sonnets and songs written down through the ages about roses, I often find the more “common language” quotations the most enjoyable. If you were here a few weeks ago and learned, perhaps, some new things about planting and cultivating roses, you may very well have at least one lovely plant turning out its colorful bounty. If your roses are of the strains that are considered either “antique” or “old garden roses” (or those developed more recently with extra attention not to losing the magic of scent) you may also be wondering how you can preserve both the color and perfume of roses. You’ve come to the right place!
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