Thanksgiving Dinner

We have much to be thankful for. A yearly reminder isn't a bad thing. I'm thankful that we both have very good health, and we're energetic and forward looking and appreciate life. I'm thankful that nature is so glorious and gives us so many opportunities to revel in her mystery. That, at this time of year, we're enjoying Indian Summer, confusing so many of the flowering plants in our garden. Even the magnolia in our back garden has thrust out another magnificent vermilion bloom.

It's the first year that little tree has flowered, after we planted it about six years earlier, and this is the third time it has flowered this year, where normally they flower in early spring, and that's it. The gigantic, incredibly robust morning glory on the brick wall in one of our front borders is ablaze with bright blue. I've had to cut back so much, yet there's still colour in the gardens, roses that insist this is still their season to shine.

Yesterday I spent a few hours in the back gardens, preparing them for winter. Cutting down everything, even the ligularia and the ladies' mantle, and the peonies and the Stella do'Oro lilies and the hydrangeas, among so many others. I lifted the dahlia bulbs and the sweet potatoes, and the begonias, to put them away for safekeeping overwinter until spring, when they'll be re-planted.

And somehow, in the process, hurt my back. That's not quite it; I had been feeling under the weather for a week, with a hint of a sore back; yesterday's garden stint exacerbated the problem, quite noticeably. I thought I'd be hampered badly, not be able to do what I had scheduled for today.

But though I woke with that same miserable back pain, I set myself about doing what I had planned to, and found the back pain ameliorated through sheer physical work, nicely energizing me, the pain much diminished..

Starting, after breakfast, with baking a pumpkin pie, sprinkling it over with half pecans before putting it into the oven. Preparing that half turkey. We'd bought it fresh, cut it in half, froze the other half. We'll still have plenty left over, so I'm planning to bake a few turkey pies with the left-overs.

I was able to clean up the kitchen, deep-clean the bathrooms, and do all the other additional house chores I reserve for Sunday morning.

Finished a letter to our two boys, prepared them to pop into the mailbox on our way for our ravine walk. Spoke with our granddaughter who, left alone at home for a few hours because she wasn't interested in accompanying her mother on a shopping trip, described to me the really large chocolate chip cookies she had baked and was in the process of taking out of the oven.

She likes to over-task, like her mother.

We were late getting out today. My husband was busy installing the four sets of shutters he had made to go over our dining room windows, after having painted them. They're not complete, since he will now begin fashioning the stained glass windows to be inserted in each of the eight door-shutters.

There was a photograph of some of the windows in the Parliament Buildings and they resemble the floral pattern he has designed.

Our ravine walk was a delight, beautiful and warm, quite amazing for this time of year. Even insects were out in their newfound freedom, flitting about, the bugs and the beetles, convinced it's spring.

We stopped to talk with neighbours on our way down the street, discussing many things, including the potential outcome of the federal election. We'll know, one way or another, in the late evening on Tuesday, after the polls have closed.

Into the oven on our return went the turkey, and after an hour tiny new white potatoes nestled in beside the half-bird, keeping it company in the oven, along with thick slices of sweet potato. I had made the cranberry sauce earlier in the week, and now also prepared tiny carrots, to cook and serve them candied, along with everything else.

Nothing green today. Good thing we ate rather lightly at breakfast time, as well as having had a relatively light dinner last night; corn on the cob and tuna-salad sandwiches with raspberries for dessert.

There can be nothing more rewarding than hearing my life-long companion and love of my life praise everything placed before him. Would be wonderful if our children could be here with us to enjoy this family meal, but this too is life.

They're not sufficiently geographically close to make it practical. We have much to be thankful for - that little fact is not one of them.