On Vacation

Editor's Note: This column was submitted on Oct. 22.

We are currently out of state, at my family reunion in Nebraska. My father was born and raised in Ponca, Neb. His dad was a railroad man, with a small farm on the side. His mom was a German immigrant. Dad had three brothers and one sister. Dad dropped out of high school, lying about his age, to join the Navy so he could fight for our country in WWII. By the time I was born, WWII was long over and dad had switched to the Air Force. Because of that, we moved from duty station (or base) to duty station every two to three years. One of the consequences of that was my siblings and I grew up rarely seeing our aunts, uncles, and cousins. We didn't really know them. (Mom was an only child, so our cousin pool is pretty much limited to dad's side.) It's really interesting and nice getting to know them in our old age.

I'm being distracted as I write, since we're sharing a four-bedroom cabin at Ponca State Park with my two sisters (with husbands). Our brother declined attending, not wanting to drive (he refuses to ever fly again - not from being scared, he was an AF pilot, but from the discomfort) from Arizona. Our older sister has passed on, but one of her daughters is here, representing her.

Anyway, my farmer husband is busy chatting with our farmer brother-in-law about, what else?, farming differences between southwest Missouri and northeast Montana. My other brother-in-law, who ran his own small engine repair until he retired last year, is joining in when they get to machinery.

I did manage to get my carrots (it was a small crop again this year) and potatoes (there were some large ones) dug before we left. It's amazing what having a firm deadline does to my procrastination powers. The pea fences are down, rolled up, and stored. The upper "wall" of the electric fence has been taken down and those fence posts pulled. Gumbo makes that a hard task. I pull that line off the fence each fall so I can get in to till the garden in the spring. The upshot is that I'm through with the garden until next year.

I have mowed twice to suck up leaves, but my trees were still loaded with leaves yet to fall, so I'll have "leaf mowing" to look forward to. We will still have warm afternoons, won't we? I ask with hope...

I'm also hoping my houseplants all survive our absence. I watered them heavily before leaving, but didn't ask anyone to come in to care for them. And watering them will be one of the first things I do when we return.

As we drive down through South Dakota and into Nebraska, we saw lots of sunflowers and corn yet to be harvested standing in the fields. My cousins who still farm said they'd just finished their harvest Friday. My cousin Mary has a Christmas tree farm and she'll be busy making wreaths after this weekend. They've also been in a drought (my youngest sister and husband recently walked across the Missouri River), so she said if it doesn't rain soon, she'll have to hose off all their trees. They're covered in dust from the trucks driving to and from harvesting the fields. They need to be shiny before selling. That dust seems to really hang in the air here.

Okay, I need to get this sent off so I can go enjoy the coffee and mimosas at the main cabin we're all congregating at.