We’ll be heading out in less than an hour for our last trip in Vanda for 2026. Our destination is Fort Lauderdale to celebrate my mom’s 98th birthday (!) at Thanksgiving, along with other family members. The 11 days on either side of the week with the fam will be spent at some of our favorite parks, known for birding, lots of bike trails, and (hopefully) warm weather — St. Andrews state park and Fort De Soto county park on the way down, then Blue Springs state park and Jekyll Island on the way back home.
Our time at home, 8.5 weeks, has been glorious. I was able to hold true to my intention of keeping our schedule light, resisting the urge to fit too much in. We had lots of bike rides and a few hikes; visited with friends; and there was a lot of kitchen time. I made a double batch of Limoncello, lemon curd, and 2 kinds of lemon chutney with lemons from my tree; big batches of blackberry jam; and I baked, a lot: banana bread, cranberry bread, and 3 types of cookies! Puttering in the kitchen fills me up (with more than just food!), even though a couple of new recipes didn’t turn out to be as delicious or as visually appealing as I had hoped! Oh well.
I became “lemon-ed out”, if that is even a thing. There were so many lemons, and after having prepared all that I did in the first weeks of being at home, I was just done with lemons — hence, my sharing of these huge and juicy marvels with Urban Seeds. Over these weeks, I lovingly hacked away at the lemon tree to prune the tallest and most gangly of the limbs, a few each week so as not to shock the tree too much, and just so we would be able to wrangle her back into the greenhouse. We did so, just in the nick of time, as an early freeze occurred the very next day. And by we, I mean John, as he did all of the heavy lifting — my job was to keep an eye on the 8 green lemons still on the tree to be sure they did not get knocked off as she was squeezed through the back gate, then squeezed even more to fit into the greenhouse. I fed the tree and thanked her for her strength and magical endurance, as she settled in for the winter. Ok! No more talk of lemons until next summer, I promise!
The native yard was put to rest as well, a true labor of love. There were blooms for the first few weeks that we were home, but now the yard is in slumber mode. The Blue Mist is still blooming, so is a very odd late bloom from a volunteer Hibiscus. We “leave the leaves”, to provide shelter for the insects and their larvae, and also because the cocoons of Luna Moths and Swallowtail Butterflies are often hidden in leaves as a decoy. I am grateful to do my part to support Mother Nature and her creatures.
And…I’ve been beading! I took a beading class in which I learned how to improve my finishing technique at both the top and bottom of the strands I’ve been making. After that, I had to initiate a recall on the half-dozen strands that I had gifted to local friends to re-string them, to ensure that their strands did not come apart! Live and Learn.
It has been a blast to be back in Vanda these past few days, packing for this trip, checking things off my list. I am so excited to be off, soon! I’ll be writing from the road… Thank you for reading, dear friends. xo
