This was our last week with Josiah at home. Tomorrow he will be set apart as a missionary and will fly out of Rochester to Salt Lake City. He’ll spend Tuesday with Geoffrey and Joni and their family and then they will take him to the Missionary Training Center in Provo on Wednesday. I’ve known this was going to happen for a long time – eighteen years, even. I always knew that all my sons would serve missions and now Josiah is the last. Him being the last one has made this harder than I expected. His leaving marks the end of an era for our family. The baby is about to leave home. It will take time, but eventually we’ll adjust to him not being here. He’s gone away for spells as long as a month before and we did okay. But this time it’s for two years. And after that he’ll move on to college and other grown up things. It makes me feel old. I know he’ll be a great missionary. I think he’s more prepared than his two older brothers, having learned from their experiences and his mother and father’s too. He’s smart and enthusiastic. He’ll do just fine. It’s me that’s going to have a problem with this.
For his last week home, we kept Josiah busy. He worked for Stacey’s bosses doing yard work on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Thursday he went to our friends, the Nicholas’s, and split firewood. And he had projects he needed to finish here at home. He and I worked on them together. We worked on the retaining wall he was building for his Aunt Julie. He helped me repair the front porch steps. He helped me dig and plant a hosta bed on the north side of the house. He helped me cut down a bunch of half-dead sumac bushes out in the meadow. He helped me plant wildflower seeds on the bank of the meadow. And he did his regular daily chores down at the barn. There are still projects to be finished, but I will have to do them by myself.
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| The new hosta bed. |
On Monday we picked up a bushel of pears from the Amish. They weren’t fully ripe so we spread them out on the dining room table and waited a few days. Thursday was a canning day and I turned some of the pears into eight pints of jelly. On Friday we blanched, sliced, and canned the rest of them. We got nine quarts of sliced pears and eight pints of jelly. I also canned a gallon of salsa on Thursday.
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| Pears and tomatoes ready for canning. |
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| Coring pears for canning. |
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| Salsa, sliced pears, and pear jelly. |
We had a very light frost on Monday morning, but it didn’t do any damage. The vegetable garden is at the peak of its productivity now. I bring in broccoli to blanch and freeze every few days. I bring in tomatoes every other day, hence the salsa on Thursday. There are late raspberries and even a few strawberries to delight us. The flower beds are in the midst of their late summer last hurrah. The phlox, dahlias, marigolds, calendulas, and cosmos are still pretty. The nasturtiums and morning glories are gorgeous.
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| September garden. |
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| Dahlias. |
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| More dahlias. |
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| And yet more. |
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| Nasturtiums. |
Out in the orchard things are looking good. The early apples are done and the mid-season apples are almost ready. I have some wonderful mid-season apples in my orchard – Caville Blanc, Wealthy, and Jonagold, and a mystery apple. The mystery apple is the best apple in my orchard. I planted it 16 years ago and didn’t label it and now I don’t remember what it is. But every year (at least in the years we don’t get a late frost) this tree gives me big, crisp, sweet red apples. Then later in October the late-season apples will be ready and we will have cider.
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| The mystery apple in my orchard. |
On Thursday we will arrive at the Autumnal Equinox. For a brief moment the amount of day and night will be an even 12 hour split. After that, the dark days begin. We are already seeing some color on the maples in our yard and up on the hills, splashes of orange and yellow here and there. Autumn is a breathtakingly beautiful season here in a good year. I hope this is a good year. I want to see one last burst of color before things get drab.
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| Still glorious. |
Today at church Josiah gave his mission farewell talk. It was short but heartfelt. In his talk he mentioned that in the last three generations of his immediate family, Josiah will be the 48th person to serve a mission (that number doesn’t include all the in-laws). His grandparents, parents, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins have been all over the world in the service of the Lord. After church today many members of our little branch bid him a fond good-bye. He has been the only active young man in our branch for years now and has done much service. It will be eye-opening for him to go to the Missionary Training Center where there will be hundreds of young men like him, all of them excited to serve.
We’re almost ready to eat lunch now and then we’re settling in for a quiet afternoon. The Shilligs are coming to our house this evening for our Sabbath Soiree. And then it will be tomorrow.
