Volunteers, Autumn tries for a foothold (and fails) and Dimples finds her flock

I have been enjoying the fruits of my volunteer arugula for weeks now.  There is nothing more satisfying than produce that you didn't have to plant and fuss over, right in your backyard.  This little cold frame has been churning out early and late greens for the past four years, bless its little untreated wooden heart.

It's very frustrating for someone who loves autumn with all her heart, to have to suffer the return of summer, smack dab in the in the middle of fall.  All the trappings of my autumn/winter cocooning have been put in place.  We had three days of snow.  My furnace came on.  Then it was 72 degrees.  Good lord.  Being inherently stubborn, I continue to drag around in my fleece robe, sweating and grumbling.  The twinkle lights on the fireplace are the only things keeping my spirits afloat.

It seems as though I will be spending most of my retirement on endless phone calls.  I thought I had everything in order - but, no.  I received a bill for my Medicare coverage at the same time I received notice that they were deducting my medicare payments from my monthly SS.  This means that I have to sit down and brace myself for an hour+ of calls to track down a human that knows his/her stuff and can straighten this out before it get out of hand.  To further complicate things, I discovered that, just because your medical center accepts your insurance, not all of the doctors within that center follow suit.  Yes, you guessed.  All my doctors except the orthopedic group accpet Humana.  Fernatssake.  The good news is that I am still within the open enrollment period, so I can switch insurers without penalty.  The bad news is that I am not looking at surgery until after the first of the year.  It should be an interesting winter.

There are definitely good things about gimping around with my cane.  I went to the town hall complex to get transfer station tickets and had to go through the whole hip explanation with the town clerk.  By the time I got to the transfer station with my recycling, two days later, both attendants raced to my car and would not hear of my lifting a thing, having been told about my 'affliction'.  It does make my independent-as-all-heck self bristle, but it also makes my presently-limited self grateful.

I am continuing to clear out things that I no longer need, want or, never used.  In the process of rehoming a 10x100 foot roll of greenhouse film (you never know when you might need one of those, right?  How about 'never'?), I met a young couple who decided to give up suburban life for a life in the country.  They had a large garden, had just built a hoophouse structure, and had chickens and ducks.  In the course of our socially-distanced, masked conversation, I mentioned that my duck, Dimples, was now a lone duck.  No longer.  She has gone to join their flock of 8, with a swimming pool.  It was bittersweet - I knew she was lonely for duck company (and was taking it out on the chickens by bossing them around), but I have had her since she was an egg.  I hope she will be happy.