{"id":8082,"date":"2021-09-25T12:10:07","date_gmt":"2021-09-25T17:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/?p=8082"},"modified":"2021-09-25T12:10:56","modified_gmt":"2021-09-25T17:10:56","slug":"letting-the-days-go-by","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/2021\/09\/letting-the-days-go-by\/","title":{"rendered":"Letting the Days Go By"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

FALL COMES<\/span><\/strong> in slow motion on the Vineyard, especially to our little acre, where the landscape is all oaks and evergreens, some of nature\u2019s most stalwart resisters of changing seasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every morning acorns plink and plonk on our back deck, falling randomly from a canopy of oak branches, heavy and drooping with an exceptional crop of nuts this year. I\u2019m hoping the abundance will keep the deer happy over the winter. They won\u2019t get all of the acorns, of course. Other critters will gather them and stash them in odd spots \u2014 in the wood pile, inside a stack of terracotta pots, underneath the steps, in a mulchy bed of perennials \u2013 so that in the spring we have a sea of pinwheel-shaped mini-oak trees germinating all over the place.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When the acorns land, the noise is startling; too many at once and Farmer heads for cover. Give him a minute though, and he\u2019s back in his sunny spot, stretched out to soak up as much solar power as he can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re doing the same, maximizing our back-deck time, enjoying the whir of the steady fall breeze and stockpiling sunlight before the days arrive when darkness comes early and we enter the long stretch of dormancy known as the Vineyard winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We have time, though. October on an Island buffered by summer-warmed seas is a gift of suspension, sort of like overtime in the football game of seasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gift of extra time in the cycle of birth, growth, flowering, senescence, and death has the effect of being surreal, in the David Byrne \u201chow did I get here?\u201d kind of way. Surreal in part because it is hard to delineate with logic or structure, but surreal, too, because it invokes an overwhelming sense of gratitude that is nearly impossible to quantify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

I feel this way about time with my Dad, who has outlived all of his brothers, my mother, and many of his friends. The seemingly \u201cextra\u201d time he\u2019s gotten has given my sister and me a new friend, someone who has been a star in the sky all of our lives, but because of a planetary shift, has moved closer to our orbit and is now a constantly luminous presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Last weekend, we stood on the beach in Lewes, Delaware, on a beautiful warm evening, to witness the wedding ceremony of my second cousin Gregory. My father was the oldest guest and the oldest member of the family present. Gregory\u2019s 10-month-old son was the youngest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four generations of our family (or at least some of us) gathered, along with other wedding guests, in a spot on the shore where many, many generations of our family have pushed boats off, dipped a crab net, dug for clams, thrown a fishing line, waded out to a sandbar, hunted for remnants of shipwrecks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Later in the evening, one of my cousins got Dad out on the dance floor. His glee was contagious \u2014 and his resilience impressive when he took a stumble and the younger generation of doctors in the room ran to his side. He was perfectly fine, he said. \u201cI\u2019m pretty good at falling,\u201d he said. \u201cI used to play soccer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And with that comes a small clue, perhaps, as to one of the possible reasons time has stretched out for Dad. In all those millions of moments in life when we are thrown a curveball and the impulse to shut down, sit down, give up or give in comes over us, we also have the opportunity to stand up, go forward, keep at it, and make the most of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

I apologize for the clich\u00e9s, but time (when it isn\u2019t suspended) is flying, and I want to make the most of it. Fortunately, I\u2019ve got a good example to follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

LOOKING FOR RECIPES?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visit cookthevineyard.com<\/a> and sign up for the free weekly newsletter<\/a>. (Something I do as part of my day job.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

If you arrived here from the internet and would like to subscribe to the Sixburnersue blog, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FALL COMES in slow motion on the Vineyard, especially to our little acre, where the landscape is all oaks and evergreens, some of nature\u2019s most stalwart resisters of changing seasons. Every morning acorns plink and plonk on our back deck, falling randomly from a canopy of oak branches, heavy and drooping with an exceptional crop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[168,163,164,162],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8082"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8096,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8082\/revisions\/8096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}