Rain today perhaps

Not tired of the rain yet and hoping that we get rain again today. Usually I am out there watering this time of year but so far I have scarcely watered the lawns. The rain has been coming regularly lately and I hope that it keeps up. 

Gradually we are decreasing the footprint as we delivered another van load to Salvation Army. Many memories went in that load. A table that Edward used to grow plants when we first moved here. He built a small plastic greenhouse in the back yard and carefully grew seedlings under lights in the basement on this table. After he stopped growing plants perhaps as much as thirty years ago the table sat there for many years with the lights still over the top but a couple  of years ago we dismantled it and a scrap dealer picked up the fixture one garbage day but the table remained. I moved it over to the wall by the washing area and used it for folding clothes. Really I wanted to put it out as well. The metal top had a white painted surface and it had washed up well after its years of service but there was a memory there that Edward wanted to keep perhaps but more likely he owned it and he just liked to keep everything that he had ever bought. We are realizing that as we continue to sort. It is definitely a trip down memory lane for all of us. Edward loved all of his possessions but he also had started to downsize them slowly and with a purpose. We are trying to pick up those threads of purpose and do as he would have wished. 

That is the third table that we have delivered to Salvation Army and there is another table that we bought about a year after we were married for our kitchen. The chairs have long gone but the table became the repository of his camera collection for a number of years but that grew so fast that trunks and bins became the container for that collection until he passed it to the Princeton Museum. Most of it but not all. The rest of that collection will go with the table to Salvation Army. My daughter recalls that in the trips to Salvation Army that the two of them made when she was a child were to buy many of these cameras that others had downsized to them. Now they make full circle trips back again along with many of Edward's cameras that he bought through the years for another collector to enjoy. 

And so the downsizing continues but the pace has slowed considerably. At the beginning the items that went were easy to select but now it becomes harder as memories slow us down. Do we really want to take this or that to Salvation Army. There is more contemplation; we are slowly getting into the things that meant the most to him. I moved all the acquired souvenirs from our trips through the last fourteen years into their plastic bins. He loved those very much. I think handling them and rearranging them brought back that trip's memory to both of us. We would stand and look at them; me looking mostly and he moving them about to suit himself. A trip to St Jacob's market a couple of years ago yielded a number of wooden song birds which became a real favourite of his. He could enjoy them with his grandsons because they were not breakable and they were young to handle china birds. 

Gradually I am assembling the rooms to contain the most favourite memories but in a way that I can manage all the contents. I am still deep in that place of loss. Yesterday Ottawa Police picked up the last long gun. It was just too difficult to do anything about that gun during the lockdown but now all four of his long guns have been managed by the police and thankyou to them for their quick work in that regard. Looking back through the years when Edward hunted with those long guns is also a memory of our early years together. It wasn't something that interested me actually and cooking a rabbit after it was shot was a task that he completed several times but my heart wasn't into eating a rabbit that had run free in the forest and gradually he thought the same. Just never thought about it before he said at the time and he put his long guns away into secret spots but now they are all held by the police and likely destroyed by now. I know that he and his brother hunted rabbit to supplement their meat supply when he was young. 

A cleaning day again and it is the basement. I am right on my schedule. I am looking forward to a smaller place one of these days and less cleaning. Edward helped me with the cleaning after he retired until just the last six months. He bought a dyson and quite enjoyed using it.