An Uncommon Morning....An Empty Nest Once Again

Breakfast At Jack's Hop Farm

6:53

It's 7:30 and both Evie and I have been up for an hour, in a house so quiet it's scary.  Where did all the grandchildren go?  Home, alas.  We have a whole day ahead of us, with lots to do, no doubt, but nothing we absolutely have to do.  Strange.  It's partly cloudy, the sun occasionally peaking through the cloud cover, and a chilly 54º.  We had rain showers at least twice last night but I am not sure how much.

Hops And Friends

Square Foot Gardening

Yesterday began with Beth and Marisa up by 6:30, anxious to get an early start home.  They were, sadly, on the road by 7:15 and, unfortunately, had lots of rain on their way but made good time, getting home in just about seven hours.  One of my buddies, Dick Redington, picked me up at 8:15 because we were having a breakfast at Jack Volker's Hawthorne farm, a few miles up Elm Flats road, near Luensman Overview Park.  He's had the sixty acre farm for forty years, with views even of Lake Erie. He has become interested in growing hops, so we got a tour of his hop garden, twenty foot poles, with wires strung between, so the hops can grow vertically.  He has various kinds, and the oldest have suffered from a mildew, ruining his crop.  It's quite a operation, lots of work, mostly done for the pure pleasure of it, a hobby, not to make money.  His farmhouse is charming, an old fashioned house, initially built I think he said in 1840, though they have done huge renovations over the years.  And its not quite your rustic farm, with an indoor lap pool, built twenty years ago and hot tub.  They also have a great garden in their backyard, looking east toward the hop garden and woods.  And all flowers and vegetables are in square foot gardening rectangles of various lengths, four foot widths.  After a tour of the hops garden, we had a great breakfast of egg casserole, homemade blueberry muffins, and sausage links.  We stayed till about 10:30 when another friend, Joe Johnston, drove me home.  Once the Chautauqua Institution's season is over, we will resume our breakfast at the Bemus Point Inn, but this was a great start to our fall gatherings on Thursday mornings.  And they are a good group of guys, with lots of news about the CI and the area, things I am not usually privy to.

Touring The Hops Garden

More Hops

Lap Pool and Hot Tub

When I got home, Evie was busy, washing all the beach towels and sheets for the beds, at least a two day job.  We have decided to pick an area each day, work on it, to get the house back in order.  Our major first task, which we have put off so far, is to reorganize the attic, so we can put away the stuff from the past weeks, like air mattresses, quilts, air conditioners, in some order so we can get at things during the winter when we need them.  And each year we have a bit more to store, so it gets more and more crowded, harder to find things.   Sound familiar.

While Evie worked inside, I was out, and brought in all but two of our water rafts and floats, deflated them, cleaned them up and left them outside to dry, hoping it would not rain.  It did not even though it looked threatening so they are now all folded, deflated, ready to be put up in the attic of my garage when I get the last two in from the lake.

So, we did not do much more the rest of the day, at least,  I didn't.  I did varnish our painted rocks one more time and Evie, in between washing towels, decided to tackled a couple of the kitchen cupboards that have become overgrown with cups, glasses, and mugs, like there's a garden up there that births new glasses every so often.  The worst part, for her, is to put away or throw away some we don't use, a near impossibility!

Late Afternoon Storm on Tuesday

We had a few glasses of wine before dinner, relaxed in our living room, as the storms rolled in, washing the dock, floats, peppering the lake.  It lasted only a half hour, then cleared up some, leaving us a lovely dusk, some sun and blue skies.  We wanted to kayak but did not have the energy.  We had a dinner of leftover chicken picatta as Evie did not want to cook.  I wonder why.  And we watched some saved series, two episodes of Masters of Sex, which we did not much like, the curse of the second year of a series.  They seemed to run out of plot, decided to have an hour of conversation between Masters and Johnson, boring and somewhat pointless, and could easily have been done in 15 minutes rather than 60.  I finished my book, THE DIVORCE PAPERS, which I really liked and started a new on, THE LAST DAYS OF CALIFORNIA, which I am also enjoying.

It is now 8:00 and it's clouded up, started to rain, a cosy start to our morning I must say.  A good day to work inside, head to the store, get organized.