Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise

Sunset

Sunrise

Sunset

Swiftly flow the days.

Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers,

blossoming even as we gaze.

Sunrise, sunset. Sunrise, sunset.

Swiftly fly the years.

One season following another,

laden with happiness and tears.

--Fiddler on the Roof

That is how our lives feel right now. Bonnie was looking at a photo of the two of us this past week and wondered where those two women had gone. Kathy told her to speak for herself, but the mirror doesn't lie, and we both seem to have done some aging over the past few years.

It's official. With mixed feelings, Bonnie will be retiring after 30 years from Cooper Industries on July 31st. It will be nice for the pets to have her home, and it will be nice for Bonnie to be able to tend her garden and have the time to work on projects around the farm while she reinvents herself and outlines the next chapter in her life.

Kathy, who has basically been semi-retired for the past several years, has no plans to change her employment status and will continue at the library 3 days a week and draw early Social Security at age 62, in January of 2010.

There has been a break in the weather and we hope to work outside today...Bonnie in her garden and Kathy running the trimmer-mower.

Don mowed the acreage yesterday (we assume it was Don because he said he was going to mow for us) and did an awesome job. The place is beginning to shape up. With the major weeds gone, the back-fill done and ruts gone, the homestead is lookin' good.

Bonnie's raspberries were delicious Thursday night. We feel like we are winning the battle with the birds for the berries...so far anyway.