Yes, I know I have to vote. As soon as Henry is up and dressed so around noon or one or something. He promised to go with me today but said he wouldn't get up early to do it. Ruth said she'll do it after work. I am trying to raise civic-minded people who make an effort to at least elect the people who align with their own thoughts on infrastructure, development, recreation, trails and property taxes. It will be important later. For now it is learning.
Also the boys. They are being taught as well. They are not as civic-minded but they also bitch and winge about traffic and development and trails and taxes so BOOM. VOTE, MOTHERFUCKERS.
In the meantime, I did all of the winterizing, or as much of it as I could do over the past week. Cutting back plants, taking down hoses and covering the spouts. I'll turn off the inside valves before it gets really cold. I will leave the one hose out by the side door due to it being where I clean my tools and buckets from throwing clay. The clay goes into the garden and I get clean tools and I don't have to worry about the plumbing.
I brought in cushions off the patio and took down some of the more delicate globe lights. I put the cut plants in the mulch pile. I raked up the garden beds and flattened them out. I covered the little baby cement fountain that lives in the orchard and Lochlan has already put another coat of clear stain on the swing to protect it from the eventual rains. I pulled up the big stepping stones and stacked them in a pile at the edge of where the grass turns to soil and I harvested the remaining rosemary that I want with a plan to plant holy basil all along the path next year and leave the path in forever. We change the pattern in order to maximize nutrients and grow things in different places. It's a weird habit but if you've ever grown corn you know that some things suck the life out of the soil, and some things suck the life out of the soil around everything else too so I try to rotate crops, as it were.
I will watch the temperatures and do the remaining things just before it all gets really cold. They are covering the pool today and by that I mean the motorized walls that slide back are being slid closed today and the pool becomes a snowglobe for the next six or seven months. We can still use it but it's not half-outside any more. They are also servicing the outside gas oven and the sauna and the hot tub and everything will be spickity-span for winter. We want it all done so we don't have to do it later, drought be damned.
The rain is out there. I know it. Climate change doesn't happen this fast. We just had a period of strange record-breaking weather and then it will return to the previous way it was. Wet and dim and mossy and gorgeous.
We also are moving slowly. Recovering from the headache and stomach-ails of eating questionable Thai food last night. I made Pad Kra Pao from scratch and I probably shouldn't have. Haha. It tasted almost as good as the real thing but also nothing like the real thing. At least I tried.