My musings from the past six months

Happy 4th of July! This day and, really, the past six months have probably been for you and me the most challenging in our day-to-day lives. We’re all self-distancing except for family and close friends. What, the Governor has said we can be in groups of 25 now? At least that gives us the chance to enjoy family and those friends who you know well, and trust they have taken the same precautions. We will get through this and hope-fully come out the better for it! 

So what have you been doing these last six months? After pondering the question, you can probably rattle off some answers: doing nothing!, cleaning out closets with bags and boxes for Goodwill, puzzle-making, working from home, taking care of your children/grandchildren, maybe working on that old junker you never had time for, cooking up a storm. The answers are endless… 

By the time you read this article, my family will have grown by two! The end of June my niece, who lives in Maine, will have delivered baby girl Morgan, and my nephew and his wife, who are local, will have delivered baby girl Blair. The babies are each couple’s first child and my mother’s fifth and sixth great-grandchildren. My younger brother Tom and his wife Beth are hoping to see baby Morgan at birth, their third grandchild. They will have isolated for two weeks prior to the birth so they can travel to Maine and hold this pink bundle of joy. Unfortunately, Tom and Beth have not seen their daughter since December and have only seen pictures of her pregnant. There’s nothing like putting your hand on the mama’s belly and feeling that baby kick. 

Our family had to make the difficult decision to cancel both baby showers. It was disappointing but understandable, I was so looking forward to oohing and ahhing over little pink baby things. 

My COVID-19 isolation has been mostly home and driving two miles to my mother’s, grocery/pharmacy shopping, and then home again. I’m so looking forward to dinner out where it’s not eating in the car or take-out. I’d like to eat at Zachary’s seated in a booth, have someone to cook for me, wait on me, and do the dishes after I’ve eaten. My husband calls me a “cheap date,” and I’m proud of it! 

My biggest joy the last few months has been my gardens. With the weather so cooperative, I managed to get into the soil the first of April, and what a difference it’s made. One flower bed that I had decided last year to take apart and grass-in has instead flourished, and I’ve been weeding like crazy, then hubby and I have been bordering it with stone. That’s where my gor-geous burgundy red lilies live! To think I was going to cause their de-mise. And the new 30-by-4-foot piece of landscape in front of the porch that had god-ugly shrubs has now been replaced with new perennials. 

Lastly, I gave my hubby Don a flag and flagpole for Christmas. It’s proudly installed next to the front island flower bed. It even has a solar light that beams downward to the ground. 

So what have you been doing these last six months? And Happy 4th of July!