Broken Record

We were blessed with a gorgous Saturday in Eastern Ontario. Oh, it was cold when we got up at 6, and the kids had to dress in their winter gear to go fishing with the cubs, but by the time they returned at noon, the day had shaken off the chill and the sun had burned the frost away.

I feel sometimes that I say the same things year after year. That I do the same things year after year. I suppose we all do to some extent. And so Saturday afternoon was spent in the garden. We dug up the rest of the potatoes and put them away into storage to get us through the next few months. We roto-tilled the gardens, and added rich compost to the soil, and then planted and mulched 150 bulbs of garlic that I had saved from our August harvest. The kids raked leaves into a huge pile and we spent a good hour leaping into them in the late afternoon sun.

All these things we do every year. And every year they seem important enough to write about.

As the sun started to get low, you could feel the day's warmth start to evaporate and I went inside to make pasta and stoke the fire. Andrew came in behind me and being the wise man he is, stopped me from making dinner.

Come and watch the kids in the sunset, he said, pouring me a glass of wine. We won't get many more days like today for a while.

And so wrapped in my plaid, I sat beside him on the deck and we watched the kids play together and laugh and race and run until the sun slowly sank behind the trees and the chill drove them, hungry and happy, into the kitchen.