Back to the calm happy me that you are all used to visiting. I normally have at least 220 readers for each blog posting. Lots of you have written words of support, both on the blog and on my Facebook page. One friend brought us new masks, one of the masks has an attached visor. It turns out all of our friends, appear to agree with us and are willing to ignore my bad language. In my defense, I have only lost my temper two or three times in nine years, which considering the times we live in and my opinionated self, is surprisingly good. So let’s move on shall we?

After we went all George Washington pruning our apple trees last winter it will come as no surprise that there are very few apples on our four trees. We are confident that next year we will have a great harvest on renewed and healthier trees. There are a few nice, big, Jonagold hanging out of the deers’ reach, which we will pick when we finish eating the plums, but there aren’t many.

Netting has been placed on the pond to inhibit eagles, heron and raccoons from picking up sushi dinners. We only feed the eighteen goldfish for another month and then they seem to happily hide at the bottom of the pond for the winter. The fish are seven years old and, even though every winter the pond has frozen at least for a day or two, the fish continue to survive. E does want to change the water before winter though, you know, when we have some water. He will put the old pond water in the garden water tanks for next summer. Fish poopage in the water is good for the veggies.

Rain was predicted for today so we confidently did a load of laundry. Rain did not happen today. Still not a drop. Tomorrow, again, we have been promised a shower or two.

The canning is finished and the garden is idling happily. I won’t have much to do up there until later in the month, when the plants have had a good water and are up for potential transplanting and pruning. Every September I play musical chairs with the plants trying to improve the layout while tossing out dead shrubs. With the stress they have all gone through this summer I might just wait until spring before I tamper too much with their drought starved roots.

The living room furniture has now been rearranged and the dining table set up as a sewing station with the best view in the land. The machine has been dusted off and the tools laid out for the opening of the annual winter quilting season. A baby quilt was started last spring but didn’t have the requisite batting and, as we all know, there are no quilting stores here. I also didn’t like my chosen backing so the quilt top has been sitting on my dresser glaring at me all summer. Everything I need has now arrived in the mail (thank you Mary and Amazon) and the baby was born last month, so it is time. Tomorrow, I pick up my seam ripper and put down my oven mitts and garden gloves.

I have an interesting new reader who is very nice and, theoretically, will replace the one that left me today. Her blog has an “about” bit at the top explaining who she is and what her blog is about. I used to have a blurb like that on my home page when I started but it was pretty redundant after I had been writing here for a few years. So I need a new description of the blog and explanation of who we are. One suggestion could be…..’If you don’t believe in vaccination, and protecting the vulnerable, read no further’ but I will give it some thought and maybe spend some time this fall redesigning the blog home page with an updated description. I am thinking, perhaps, it would be the simplest to just say this blog is about a day in the life, off grid, on an island with a heart transplant recipient during a pandemic. Hmmmmm,

or maybe I will stick with just a day in the

life, for short