An Excerpt From Grandma Gatewood's Journal

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(veggies from my backyard this weekend)

 



I love all the parts of October. Where I live the temperatures and the smells outside during this month are absolutely magical. October skies are always a robust robin blue, the sun seems to cast an orange/golden glow over everything, and pumpkins line all the porches. If Octobers were somehow stretched to 60 days, instead of just 31, I don't think anyone here in Utah would complain.

The weather has been so pleasant, I find myself outside doing yardwork until it gets dark... I have SO much I want to do. When I am too lazy to get stuff done, my mind has been drifting to this excerpt from Grandma Gatewood's Walk, which I read last month... the author talks about "the extraordinary manutia of her twilight", how she bought and ran a small trailer court near the Appalacian Mountains... she did all the upkeep herself.

"The upkeep on the place was hard. Tenants left trash and rags and bottles outside, so she'd clean up and trim around the sirts with a butcher knife while they were away. When her gas mower broke down, she cute the grass with a push mower. She quilted and braided rugs and wrote leters and spoke at school assemblies and washed the windows at the Methodist church."

And here is a post from Grandma Gatewood's diary when she was 80 years old:

May 19, 1967

I took a mattock and shovel and worked on the road around the court; dug a ditch to let the water out, and dug the high places into holes. Lifted the grass around where the well was dug and wheeled five loads of dirt and filled in. Then put the sod back and watered it and beat it down with the shovel. Put the block of walk back in place. Spaded and planted two hills of cukes, two pumpkins, four hills of peanuts. Put a fence around to keep the rabbits out. Burned the trash. Got some asparagus down the track and picked lettuce and a few strawberries. Went to the P.O. Fixed the underpinning. And I'm tired.

When I think of what that little old lady could do in one day, at the age of 80, I feel like I can do anything!