a Victory Garden

[digitS']

Paul Solman: I wouldn’t have thought of a 50-year-old woman as “old.”
Teresa Ghilarducci: Yeah, well, neither do I nor do I think of a 50-year-old man as being old.

I was watching the PBS News Hour last night. These words kind of struck me as age-related, themselves. When I was 20, I would have thought of a 50 year-old as old. I thought of a 45 year-old as old!

To convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence — that which makes its truth, its meaning - its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. ~ Joseph Conrad

Let me just talk history and personal experience. I remember visiting the home of my grandparents when I was about 20. It was the "vacant" home. The door was locked, we couldn't get in. No one had lived there since my grandfather had died, 15 years earlier.

The home was in the country, a beautiful setting on the McKenzie River in British Columbia. My grandmother's "victory garden" was still there! Or, the perennial beds that formed the outlines of it were. She had planted the garden in the shape of a "V." I had never seen it before. My grandmother moved "back to the states" but I had never met this grandfather.

Fifteen years! It seemed like an enormously long time to 20 year-old me!

What about to you? To you now ... To you then?

Steve

[PaulF]

All a matter of perspective. When I was 18 I dated on "old lady" of 21. I never thought I would reach the old age of 40. Now at 67, the "old" people are in their 80s what am I going to do in another 15 years when I reach "old age?"

Back in the days of your grandmother victory gardens were popular and served a wonderful purpose. Never saw or heard of a garden in the V shape. Unique.

[webmaster]

I ponder this all the time. Things left undone and the dwindling time left for me to accomplish them. David Bowie had always been a part of the background noise around me, fading in then out at various times. Watching the movies and seeing familiar stars now older. Reminders everywhere. Doesn't help that it's winter.

[digitS']

Well ya know, we came north so we would keep better in the cold.

Oh yeah, there are nothing days in the winter but when you live near 49° North latitude, the nights are twice as long as the hours of the day ..

. gallows humor ! I can already see a little light of an endless summer reflected off the winter snow ... squinting my eyes helps .

Steve

[webmaster]

I'm planning on tying up some fishing flies this winter and getting onto some of the small streams around here. I've been reading some fishing blogs and it seems that fishing these little streams in winter, not ice fishing, but stream fishing, is a thing around here. I'm quite encouraged about that!

[digitS']

When I was a little bigger than a sprat , I lived near Humboldt Bay in northern California. Jacoby Creek ran into the bay but it wasn't a body of water of any size. A cattle ranch covered several hundred acres on both sides of the creek and there were no homes along its final mile or two.

I would walk through elementary school playgrounds and be immediately in the pasturelands. Walking to where the creek entered the bay, I could fish upstream, usually wading slowly along in the water, nearly always catching trout.

During months with "R's" - I could carry my gunnysack out into the mudflats to dig clams. At home, I would make clam chowder - even experimenting with both New England and Manhattan styles .

Of course, in those months, I wouldn't treat myself to skinny dipping in the creek where a tractor from the ranch had been used to dig out some of the creek bed. A little too cold for that but they made a hole larger and as deep as a backyard swimming pool ...

Steve