Sacrificing For Room

Makes sense, doesn't it, that after working for 50 years retirement is in order? Even if we're speaking of an object that becomes animate only when it's being manipulated by human hands...? And such is the case with my potato peeler, the one I've had and used for a half-century. Its cutting edge has grown so thin I risk shattering it every time it's used. Time it was retired, and I've done just that, having acquired a new one a few days back. It's certainly low-tech, an ordinary little metal, roller-blade potato peeler. That has lasted so long.

It deserves respect for having been such a dependable little device. Not at all like the electric kettle that just died on us. We'd acquired it only a year ago. To replace the fourth - or is the fifth - such kettle that has done duty for us over the years. Seems the newer ones have been equipped to become 'obsolete' in record time. When we went out to shop for a replacement I saw nothing I really liked, other than a glass, stove-top whistling kettle on sale for $6.75. And that's what I bought. Low-tech, reliable.

We got the little peeler at a Home Hardware store, located in Arnprior. Because of the big box stores that prevail in urban areas, these old hardware stores, even if they do represent a chain, tend to locate in rural areas, where they're still appreciated. We'd gone there to look at their specifics for advertised garden sheds, in knocked-down condition, to be put together by the purchaser, on site. We decided we would sacrifice one of our apple trees, the largest, messiest, and least-productive one, for space.

I took solace in setting about pruning roses of spent blooms, and newly-outstretched branches of our two Sargenti crabapple trees, in the front garden. The old apple tree was one of the first trees we planted in our-then-new backyard. And finally, it has acquired an exquisitely beautiful exfoliating bark, in its venerable age. But it has always been prone to fungal and insect attacks and although we once began an early-spring spray treatment, we just didn't follow through.

And now it's gone. Preparatory to making an adequate space in our small backyard for another, larger garden shed that is capable of accepting our garden furniture for storage throughout the winter months, and the lawnmower, and the monster of a snow-thrower.