Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Missing My Best Friend


Dear Lucy,

Maybe it's the weather or just the time of year, but I am missing Anne especially these days.

Back when we bought our first house in Washington lovingly nicknamed, "The Ferndale Zoo"-- because it was the "hippie house" where folks felt comfortable dropping by unannounced to hang out and play a game, talk, play in the vegetable garden or have an impromptu meal--August was canning time.

Because Anne grew an enormous garden and most of it was coming ripe in August, we canned lots of green beans, beets, squash and then apple-pie in a jar from apples gleaned from the yards of friends, blackberry sauce from the berries picked around town, mushroom soup made from mushrooms purchased at a mushroom farm and of course borscht that Anne made in a pot large enough to swim in.

We also had often procured fire wood over the course of the summer (again often from the property of friends), and would be busy splitting and stacking it for the winter. We heated our house completely with our wood burning stove and free wood.

After a couple of years of splitting wood with an axe, we bartered for an old, loud, smoke belching, gas powered log splitter that made the job easier so long as we could keep the contraption running.

Then, when time permitted, there were the last minute short-but-sweet rides on the Harleys before they were put to bed for the winter.

I miss my best friend.

--Kathy

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