by Mary Lou
Republic County WIFE

November 1, 2001

I'm a Kansas farm wife. I returned last night from a trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota to visit my son and his family and hear my granddaughter, Katie's piano recital, so I woke this morning to two suit cases that needed to be unpacked and clothes to wash. I added the little black cat Halloween decoration Katie had sent home to me to my Halloween table decoration, got things put away and the wash partly on the line to dry and partly in the drier. I looked through some of the pile of letters and papers that came while I was gone while my dinner cooked.

While I was gone we had a killing frost in my yard, so the tomato plants had frozen. In the afternoon I worked in the garden to untangle the dead plants from the tomato cages that were there for them to climb on and hauled the dead vines and dead tomatoes out of the garden so they would not leave disease for next year's crop.

I took down fence that was around the garden so my son can later plow the garden. I have to have a fence around my garden so the rabbits don't eat the plants. Some of the panels of fence were too heavy for me to carry alone, so when my grandson came by, I got him to help me.

The tomato cages needed to be sprayed with a bleach solution to kill any disease that might be on them. The fence posts that held up the cages needed to be sprayed too. Then I hauled them off to the shed where they are stored for the winter. When I am working in the garden, I like to listen to NPR radio. That  keeps me entertained.

It was a lovely day in my yard and the temperature was in the mid seventy's but when I left the yard with my bicycle for my daily bicycle ride, I discovered a strong south wind was blowing. That was fine when I was going north and I went a little further than usual to go to a fencerow of Osage orange trees and collect a few hedge balls. When I turned south, I discovered how nasty that wind was. The mile and a half that I was going south wasn't fun. I was riding on the state highway and a couple of big grain trucks passed me and really kicked up the wind. I finally got home and took a little break to some more mail.

I was ready then to go out and do some mowing of my grass. I love my pretty green grass and it is so nice at this time of the year. In Sept. I worked very hard to get some dead spots replaced and now it is growing so nicely. Some leaves are falling so under the trees I drove backward to grind up leaves. I didn't get that job done before it was 5:30 and time to come in to listen to the news.

About that time though, Katie called and then I talked with my son, Dave, about ordering a scanner for my computer. We had shopped in Minnesota, but I didn't want to carry home extra luggage. Dave gave me a web site to order it but I need to get that done before the sale goes off. I caught the news on public TV while I was cooking and eating supper. I made myself an apple pie for dessert. Before I was finished, my other son Dean stopped by.

Dean has been harvesting milo and planting wheat and now is getting set up to bring his calves home from the pasture. He was checking with me about an appointment we have with the accountant to start working on income taxes. I also persuaded him to help me find a corn knife so I can chop down my cannas. They grew very tall and had strong stalks that need to be cut before I dig the bulbs to store for the winter. I sent some of the papers home with him that he doesn't get.

I cleaned up the kitchen, then made some phone calls. All my phone calls are long distance and they are free at night on my cell phone so that is a good time to call. My daughter in law and I are 4-H leaders and she was trying to get the program book for the next year ready to print. We needed to get the rest of the enrollments in and check on some new members. I also made some calls to recruit some singers for our choir Christmas cantata. Our last practice we had only two sopranos, one bass and lots of altos and tenors so we needed to recruit some sopranos and basses for practice tomorrow night. One soprano I called is having surgery next week, so I needed to listen quite awhile to her problems.

It was almost bedtime, but I still needed to check my e-mail and press some slacks that I had washed. I had some nice messages on e-mail as well as some assignments for another day. One message was really neat. It compared the life of a Christian to a pumpkin that had all the yucky insides cleaned out and God's light lit inside to shine out. That was a nice thought with which to close the day.