Last Day of October: Will There Be Strawberries?

The temperature dipped below freezing last night. Next Wednesday the daytime high is supposed to be over 18C. We had the heat turned on a few days ago, then turned it off again when the weather got warmer. This morning I am thinking about turning the heat back on, as it is 18C in the house right now. But the radon reading is over 200, the maximum level for safety in Canada, a maximum that is much lower in other countries. So I have the basement window open to clear the radon, and the interior temperature of the house continues to drop. It is perfect in here for bundling up and feeling a wee bit cozy, in the short term, it can get very old, very fast.

The chilly indoor temperature reminds me of my childhood. The farmhouse had a furnace with registers in every room on the main floor, and one register on the second floor, where the bedrooms were located. The windows were single pane, there were no storm windows. There was very little insulation. The bedrooms were cold in the winter, which seemed normal. There was pleasure to be had by standing over the one register on the second floor, to let the warm air blow up and into a billowing nightgown!

The bedrooms at my Granny and Grandpa’s house were also cold in the winter, much colder than at the farm. They heated the ground floor with wood furnace, and a wood stove in the kitchen. There was no heat on the second floor of their house. It was very cold at night, the contents of the chamber pots under the beds were frozen in the morning (there was no indoor plumbing until the late 1960s).

When I studied Cartography at university, I undertook to map the prevalence of indoor plumbing in Ontario, cross referenced with public health records. I chose that project because the assumption that indoor plumbing indicated healthy living was offensive to me. This theory of association had been posited in several publications I had read for another course. My Grandparents were perfectly healthy, as were the members of their community, without indoor plumbing. Statistically there was no evidence to support the premise that indoor plumbing was a good indicator of healthy living. It was a highly unusual line of inquiry, it made my professor at the time smile.

Yesterday I enjoyed a few fresh strawberries from the garden at breakfast. I wonder if there will be any today. So far there have been a few strawberries and a few ground cherries to enjoy for every breakfast. Attila covered the strawberry plants last night against the frost, but we had a freeze.

Cream of Broccoli Soup has been a wonderful lunch for the last few weeks. There is enough garden broccoli frozen for one more batch of soup base, which will make another seven bowls of soup. Soon it will be time to start making Cream of Tomato Soup Base, using canned tomatoes, and Cream of Spinach Soup Base, using frozen garden spinach. There are enough jars of tomatoes, and packages of frozen garden spinach to provide lunches until next summer. It is this kind of good fortune that allows us to eat healthy food on the meagre government pensions.

After enjoying a brief return to her apartment, my Mom is in hospital again. My sister says she is OK, very tired, resting, and starting to feel better. I’ve known my Mom since she was nineteen years old, just a girl, and that is who I see when I look at her, such a fierce, bright spirit. My Aunt called me “Mother’s Little Helper” when I was young, the eldest of five close-in-age children, always taken for older than my age. It feels very odd to be living so far away right now.

Worldly

Weather

-2°C
Date: 6:00 AM EDT Saturday 31 October 2026
Condition: Partly Cloudy
Pressure: 103.1 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: 0.4°C
Dew point: -1.8°C
Humidity: 85%
Wind: WNW 10 km/h
Visibility: 24 km

Quote

“You can’t love a crowd the same way you can love a person.
And a crowd can’t love you the way a single person can love you.
Intimacy doesn’t scale. Not really. Intimacy is a one-on-one phenomenon.”
Hugh Macleod
How To Be Creative