Been a year, time to write.
In the past I always thought that our lives seem to completely change every six months. We seem to move in a new direction every six months and it seems like our previous life was very different. The rest of the world always seems stable.
That is no longer the case!
The world caught up with us finally and now the whole world has completely changed!
After we got home from our trip last year May, we did the usual things. Summer, followed by my teaching in the fall. One highlight of last year end was our trip to India. We did two spectacular things while in India. The first was that my parents, Tanya, Leena and I went to Jharkhand, where I was originally born! This was their first trip to my home state, and my first time back there since I came to the US. It was great fun!
The other lovely part was my parents’ 50th marriage anniversary celebrations in Hyderabad. Johan flew in and my relatives came together to have a spectacular party. The best part was meeting everyone. It was the greatest. And a direct antithesis of what was to follow.
We got back to the US, and bam! The world shut down! Coronavirus hit the world and everyone is now avoiding other human life forms and is roaming around in masks. Rosie was initially very curious about our masks. She thought we were wearing them to amuse her (of course, everything is about her!). Soon she was bored because we stopped going for our morning coffee trips to Websters. We also stopped having visitors, so she had no one to complain about. Our town’s streets grew quiet as all the students left town and did not return.
Sadly, Ma passed away in March at the great age of 98. We are happy she was here for 14 months a couple of years ago. Those were good times.
Other than the threat of the disease lurking in the background, we have been having a good ol’ time in Elf land. Luckily we had been working on getting our pond going last year. We finished it in spring. Johan set up an elaborate gutter system to let it fill up with rain water. Our pond filled pretty quickly. It turned out to be a huge blessing, since we wanted to avoid the public pools. We used the pond during hot days. We set up a couple of pumps and have been putting pond plants. We also brought in some goldfish.
Following that we brought in some rocks from the creek to increase surface for micro organisms to thrive on. I guess we also brought in fish eggs, because now our pond is FULL of fishes! They nibble our toes when we go in! We brought in some tadpoles and waited until they turned into frogs. We released them in the pond, but haven’t seen or heard from them since. Hopefully we will see some frogs next year. The pond is a great project. Soon hopefully we will be able to use it for aquaponics.
We set up our gardens better this year. We have the vege patch as always. We also have had our berry patch for the past couple of years. We also have the perennial herb patch, pumpkin patch and a corn and strawberry patch. So our yard is a patchwork of vege patches! The greenhouse is producing veges, although this has been an overall disappointing year in terms of production. The weather was off, and I think my vege garden needs some serious nitrogen fixing and cutting back of trees for more sun. We still have managed to can and freeze lots of vegetables.
We set up a second fence to keep the chickens and dog from wandering off outside the yard. We also fixed things around the place and are revamping our home. We are busy fall cleaning and making our house nicer.
Johan has more car projects than I can keep track of. Suffice it to say that he is staying super busy with them.
The kids are home this year. They are both taking apart printers, computers and whatever else Johan wants them to work on. Tanya is virtual schooling and Leena is homeschooling. Maybe time to hit the road again this winter?!! Hmm, sounds nice to me!
elfhut 