I’m not sure if befuddled is a word or not, but my spell check doesn’t reject it, so perhaps I can get away with using it if I happen to catch my editors in a jovial mood. It’s a word my mother used to use quite often when she caught me wandering around looking for something to do or to escape from doing. It explains my present situation with a dotted i and a perfectly crossed t, although the word itself supports neither.
I happen to be, at this precise moment, neck-deep in the process of moving my carcass north to the hinterlands, sporting a rural route address about four clicks in a westerly direction from Markdale. The problem is, I can’t find anything, when I need it, anywhere, though I know I have it. If my Little Lady were alive today, she would be raising her eyebrow and questioning, “So. What else is new?” I didn’t always agree with her subtle sense of humour.
The trouble is, she was a pack rat and I have acquired her addiction. To put it in plain and simple language, I’ve got too much stuff, which I have stuffed, but I can’t remember into which box it was stuffed or where, in which room, when I need it. I know it will once again be sorted and used, or thrown out, when it gets to where I am going, but at the moment anything and everything I want is playing hide and seek. That is a game I haven’t played since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, or as my father used to explain it, “I was so small and slim that I had to stand up twice in order to make a shadow.”
One thing I am really thankful for is the help that I have received from friends and neighbours. Most of my readers know that it was my Little Lady who always drove me to where I needed to go. Whenever I need wheels now, to go pick up something or cart another load, I seldom have to make a second phone call – they just arrive at my door at the appointed time.
This remarkable advantage of small town living I am going to miss tremendously. But life moves on, and I’m quite sure, having already met quite a number of my new northerly neighbours, that this will not be too much of a problem in the future. It is just a matter of me getting familiar with who is where and on what schedule.
The garden I had planted, two weeks later than it should have been, has turned out exceptionally well this year. We have had ample rains, so it has grown in leaps and bounds. The year previous, it was wiped out completely by the tornado that struck on Aug. 20, but we were able to pick corn, green and yellow beans, shallots, beets, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers all previous to that date this year. To a guy who has become 90 per cent vegetarian, with a grow-it-yourself passion, that is “music to my ears” or perhaps better said, “a rumble to my tummy.”
Well, folks, it looks like I’m running out of space once again, so I guess I better stop playing the biblical quote, “Seek and ye shall find” with the letters on my keyboard and get out of here.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca 519-986-4105