Winding Down

“Picnic in the park…it’s date night!”

“Give us this day our daily bread.”  Matthew 6:11 KJV

Remember when you were a kid and summer stretched out before you like an endless ocean of fun? I do. We played all over the neighborhood from morning till dusk when the street lights came on. Then you could still be outside playing for a while but you had to be out in front of the house. Finally, mom would call us in and we would drag our seriously sunburned and mosquito bitten bodies in for a much needed bath. If we were really good, we got milk and cookies or a bowl of ice cream before bed.

Even though I didn’t own a calendar and I never really payed much attention to time, I always knew when summer was drawing to a close. You could hear the loud “whee-oh-whee-oh-whee-oh” of the cicadas droning in every tree in the neighborhood. There is a constant serenade of night noises in the summer in West Virginia. Our climate is bug heaven. But it was the cicadas, or locusts, that were the harbinger of fall. As we drove around town last night, we heard their incessant buzzing every time we passed a tree. I cannot hear them without having that same back-to-school cozy feeling I got when I was a kid.

After the adventure yesterday with the smoker and I boxed up the ribs, we stopped at the store for side dishes and headed to the park for live music. It was date night. The ribs were divine, if I do say so myself. I think the pork loin was a little dry. It’s just not my favorite cut. We carried our chairs over and found the perfect spot. You can definitely feel fall in the air. I had to pull on a sweatshirt before the end of the performance. Afterwards, we ran a couple errands and stopped for ice cream before heading home.

“Live music in the park!”

It was really fun smoking the meat yesterday. There was a very long time after Mr. Virgo died that I just did not cook. I couldn’t concentrate and had little appetite anyway. It’s been a lot of fun cooking for, and with, Mr. FixIt. It’s another area of my life where I see healing. I have to clean the smoker this morning before we head to the farm to mow. And the beat goes on…

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