It is the last weekend in August. My birthday was this past week marking every year "back to school" and the end of summer. I am sincerely grateful to have a job in a school that grants me the summers off, but having summers off just makes it more difficult to start again. I am leaving later today....with a heavy heart.
The garden is full and beautiful minus a few mishaps with the cucumber plants and the tomato cages falling over, it was a good season and now fall harvesting is upon us. My husband Allen will stay here in our home in PA while I head back to Long Island (mwahhh!!) - right now I am not quite so fond of him since he gets to live the life I so yearn for all, the time. I worry that the canning will overwhelm him since he works full-time and only has the evenings to can the tomatoes. Its a long process, he has already decided he is not boiling them in order to peel them. He will keep the skins on....I would choose to peel. Oh well.

I made a delicious pasta salad last night for dinner, using veggies from garden.

Use any hardy pasta, cook al dente. cool it off with some cold water (so it stays al dente).
Pour some olive oil - eye ball it, to keep from sticking. I tend to be generous.
then put veggies in and some feta cheese.
I used arugula, basil, cucumbers, little yellow pear tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, Italian green pepper, green and wax beans (blanched for about 3 minutes and cut into bite size pieces and feta cheese. It was light yet hardy and very tasty. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

I will be back next weekend so I am not gone for good, but I will truly miss my daily jaunts, the quiet and peace that my garden offers me.

In just about 10 days I will celebrate another birthday, thank God. As I have matured (not so much), I have come to appreciate looking back just a bit. My girlfriends and I, all respectfully in our upper forties and lower to mid fifties, at times sit around and ponder those wonderful younger years that seem so long gone. Which makes me realize that I truly did not appreciate the oils in my skin, my dark lovely hair, the skin that at times betrayed me by allowing a pimple to surface. The above picture was taken in my 8th grade classroom by my Science teacher Mr. Vazquez because I said out loud " I am not a pretty girl". He felt I had no esteem and he was probably right but it was right around puberty where we all hate ourselves. He told me that he would take this picture and one day, many years later I would look at it and understand just how pretty I was.

He was right, over the years at one stage or another I have found some things that did not appeal to me and the older I got the more grateful I became when I looked at pictures at all stages of my life. Another Birthday is an opportunity to celebrate all the years. Like the photo around my 9th birthday (which was the only birthday celebrated as a child) where my hairclips are not really aligned and the part in my hair is a tad off, but my eyes are young and full of promise and my hair is not needing of a dye job.

My friend Lisa and I are known to complain about our weight, our hair, our complexion, the dark circles under our eyes, the cellulite, the bulge in our belly....blah, blah, blah, well its life and its been good.

Yes, we are aging, yes some days we look better than others, yes the gray will someday win, No we will never be 20 again, and the spring in our step may be a little painful at times, but we absolutely must continue to take all opportunities given to us to bring out our inner child, though the merry-go-round does seem a little slower.