The Journal: Cracked Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

so it
got cold, only thirty-three degrees when I got up. When the sun
came up, the clouds rolled in so there was no solar heating.
    I left one cherry tomato plant in the garden,
covered at night with a frost bag. The few tomatoes on it won’t
ripen without warmth, so I needed to pick those and bring them
inside, then pull the plant up. There’s also most of the short row
of Swiss chard that seems totally unaffected by the cold. I picked
some last night for dinner, so that I will leave alone to enjoy
while I can. It’s time to dump the flowers on the deck and put the
planters underneath. One more thing to cross off of that nagging
prep list.
    Eric called to tell me that he is going to
come up for Thanksgiving. Wow, two visits in two months. I wonder
what’s up?
     
    * * *
     
    Jason brought Jacob over around noon. He had
a job to do that would take him a few hours, and since Amanda, my
daughter in law, is still out of town, I agreed to watch my nine
year old grandson. Jacob is autistic and takes a bit more attention
at times, but he plays so well by himself that it was easy to
continue with my chores. I dumped the flowers, hauled in wood,
changed the litter box, and did some laundry. Then Jacob and I went
for a short walk along my road.
    Jason showed up around 5:30 P.M., just in
time for dinner. I made two Cornish hens, stuffed with fresh herbs
and cooked in the woodstove oven, served on a bed of basmati rice
with a side of Swiss chard. It was nice to cook for someone besides
myself. Jacob is fussy a eater, so I always keep chicken nuggets or
noodles on hand for him. He loves noodles.
     
    * * *
     
    JOURNAL ENTRY: October 28
     
    No snow, although it sure is chilly! It got
down to thirty degrees last night. I built a nice fire in the cook
stove, started a new book, and spent the day relaxing. The fire
felt good, and I’m planning to cook a pot roast for dinner, a nice
long, slow cook. Yum.
    It looks like that hurricane is going to
wreak some havoc on the East Coast. The media is calling it a
“perfect storm”, a nor’easter colliding with a cold front from the
west. They are predicting that some areas might see fifty inches of
snow! Even up here we don’t get that in one fall. The most that
I’ve ever seen is forty inches when I still lived deep in the
woods. That was a blizzard to remember, long before the Weather
Service was naming winter storms.
    Over on one of my internet groups, Survival
Retreat, the speculations have already started on whether or not
the hardest hit areas of the storm are going to be able to hold
elections next week, or if they’ll be suspended. That’s never
happened before.
     
    * * *
     
    Today is the last Monday of the month. I paid
my bills for November online. Gosh, I love doing that! They are all
done and will go out when they should, automatically. I still
needed to plug in an amount for the propane bill, since the fuel
will be delivered on Thursday. It felt really good to have enough
in the checking for the rest of the year, with the balance in the
savings, ready to transfer over, providing no expensive emergencies
come up.
    It was twenty-five degrees this morning, and
the furnace failed to come on when it was supposed to. However,
when I bumped up the temperature manually, it kicked right in.
Hopefully it was only a glitch. The woodstove is going now and it’s
quite comfortable. The temperature outside has risen to forty-five
degrees and the skies are a deep blue with near blinding
sunshine.
    I got another winter prep done. I recharged
the generator battery for easy starting. It isn’t hard to start it
with the cord, but my shoulder still isn’t one hundred percent and
I don’t want to re-injure it. The generator has the capability to
start by either pull cord or key, and the key method requires a
battery to furnish the necessary power. Jason got it all rigged for
me after I got the right sized battery. When the gennie runs, it
charges the battery, although if I don’t use it