Unexpected Joys

It's a whole wild ride being retired. Who knew that I would be honored each evening for dinner with a lovely meal?  I did not have to shop for it or cook it. In harvest seasons I provide vegetables from my garden, and in the morning, in season,  I leave the day's bounty on the kitchen counter. My husband, Andy will use what I have picked.

In retirement he has become a four star chef. I come up from my studio with no idea of what's for dinner. Entering, I smell the wonderful odors of whatever it is that will soon be on the table.

This is tonight's supper: a cold salad with shrimp that he knows I love, on a bed of spinach and tomatoes and mushrooms with an incredible garlic sauce on the side, lovely bread.

We talk our heads off at dinner. Always politics! For so many years he wasn't even home at dinner time and I cooked basic for the hoards of teenagers when I got back from work.

Now, we are foodies, thinking about what's fresh, what's local, what's nutritious. And how do you make great food?


After we left our work and moved here to a 300 acre ranch, we find that there is a lot to do!  The pastures must be mowed as well as the 2 acre lawn around the house, the gardens tended, the pool deck kept clean. We have a few wonderful local people who help out with some handy-man issues, and house cleaning, and as we age we know how much more we will depend on them.

For now, we're good. This week we bought a new "used" golf cart. Our old one that has done ten years of duty is not reliable. This new one will be able to take four people on rides through the pastures, and, in time, will ferry us between our buildings. The ancient dog will love it.

Retiring to a new place means having to make a new community of friends. For us, this is always an ongoing development and we love having folks nearby who at the last minute are up for coming for dinner when there is excess tuna.

And the primary joy for me is having the wide scope of the natural world to discover, learning which wild flowers bloom where and when, watching all the life in this peaceable kingdom - cattle, deer, turkeys and cranes all together. I love my night forays down to the pond to see how many alligators are there.

So much of this is bliss. But next blog I will speak of wrinkled knees.