Magpie # 38

In tombstone city

All are "created" equal.

Side to side; rich, poor.

Autumn hangs around longer than usual.

This weekend last, the Saturday was a cold 38 degrees but the sun was as brilliant as ever.  When it was suggested that we use some time to put the lawn furniture away I was more inclined to remain inside and read.  For some unseen reason I decided that some fresh, brisk, bracing autumn air was just the thing I needed, I headed outside and did a good afternoons work.  All the furniture got brushed and stored.  I pruned the holly and butchered the forsythia; the one in back by the compost heap,the one on main street just got trimmed away from the wall of the house.  Could have left it for a few weeks just for the Halloween sound effects it creates on nights with full moon and full breezes.

Sunday Morning greeted us with 39 degrees and rain: so glad we got so much done the day before.  A good day to stay in and read, after changing the furnace filter, and closing the cellar windows.

Even with the cold and rainy weather of late, we've yet to have a killing frost.  So D. is still harvesting green/red peppers fresh from the garden for her daily omelet.  The rutabagas are still unharvested, there is one huge cabbage waiting patiently to be brought in to the root cellar as well are the carrots.  And the marigolds continue to bless the eyes with a profusion of Mexican color.

I think I can get used to this work a month off a month routine but alas when I return on 6 Dec. It'll be continuous 'til next fall, or late summer at least.

Had a little self induced scare over the weekend inviting a visit to the Dr. yesterday.  He allayed my fears and gave me a clean bill.  Cool!

Ta ta; off to the shower.

Today, 19 October, is my wonderful wife's birthday.

Happy Birthday Lady Di. 

She admits to 59.95+tax, but suffice it to say; I married a younger woman..

She recieved a Kindle and loves it!

What, pray tell, have I been doing of late, you may be asking; or not.

Besides sitting on the patio and reading Moby Dick, Starting my "new" job in Massena and getting back into my gym routine, I've spent the weekend sucking up the perfect fall days watching nature's quilting party and imaging the newly created quilt of russet and gold blanketing the ground as she snuggles in for the long winter to come.

Oh, and yesterday I started cleaning up the vegetable garden.  I decided to leave the marigolds in their profuse splendor until we get a frost; which is scheduled to arrive tonight while I'm on call in Massena.

Magpie Tales # 34
In the dark of dawn on an early spring day in the year 1908, Nina Larocque finished breast feeding 7 month old Willard.  She laid him, sleeping, in his bassinet, turned the flame down on the kerosene lamp and went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for her husband Jim.

Twenty four year old Jim, a  grocery store owner, followed by the family dog Laddie, came into the kitchen just as Nina was putting his breakfast on the table.  He asked Nina if she was going to join him for breakfast, but she said she wanted to get a load of laundry done so she could hang it out before Willard awakened.  She would eat after that if time allowed.

Jim left the house most mornings near seven AM or there abouts.  It took a good twenty minutes to a half an hour to walk up to his store on Ford St.; giving himself time to get things ready before he opened at eight o'clock.  When he left, Laddie was asleep under the kitchen table, Nina was already out in the back yard hanging up the clothes, and Thelma, his oldest, was still upstairs asleep.

When he closed the door behind him, as he left the house, Thelma heard the door close and came down the stairs at a run calling after him wanting to say 'bye.  The commotion woke Laddie who came running to see what Thelma was yelling at and as he came by Willard's bassinet his vigorously wagging tail struck the oil lamp knocking it on the floor spilling kerosene all over the carpet and under the bassinet and caught fire immediately.  Thelma frightened out of her wits ran to the kitchen yelling to her mother only to find her mother not there.  Nina, hearing all the yelling, called to her that she was in the yard.  Thelma rushed out through the back door and told her mother in a rush of breathless words that the dog had set the floor on fire under Will's bed.

When Nina rushed in to the baby's bassinet she found it fully inflames and Willard's cries/ screams were  bone chilling.

Although  the house was saved, Willard was not, and was laid to rest in the family plot at  7 months of age.