a year and a day; how time does fly

Yesterday morning, between 4:15 and 4:30 AM, the one-year anniversary of Lisa's passing came and went. I was at work, talking to my regular Monday/Wednesday/Friday customer, Mike. He couldn't believe that it had been a year already either.

Mike's a real nice guy. He's on dialysis and comes in, at about 4 AM, before his appointment three mornings a week. He gets two freshly-cooked sausage-and-egg biscuits and a cup of decaf, and then we usually chat a bit. Most of the time I'm quite busy so we don't often talk for long, but yesterday I was ahead of the game, so to speak, and had time to hang out.

After I got home from work, I tried a couple of times to sleep. Two shortish naps were all I managed early on; the weather was beautiful outside, so I wandered around the property a bit with Rocko. The fallen leaves lay like a fluffy snowfall on the eastern slope. Most of the taller weeds have been killed off by the recent frosts and the snakes are probably in hiding by now. Much better for walking. I really need to get another sling blade to replace the one that Lisa's mom took back, but much of the dead vegetation can be knocked aside with my walking stick.

A few days ago, I thought that the fall colors had already peaked in our cove, but the sunlight brought out the colors yesterday and it was pretty darn impressive. I've been taking a lot of nearly-identical photos of the northeast mountains this month in an attempt to document the progression of seasonal coloration. So far today, it's cloudy and not suited to getting the best colors, but yesterday had patchy clouds and there were some nice bright opportunities. I'm planning to put a selection of photos on Facebook once the color cycle finishes, i.e. this winter.

And so Rocko and I begin our second year without Lisa, grateful that we got her home to the mountains before she had to leave us, and grateful that she got us here too.