Harvesting all that love...

The harvest. 

The harvest. Summer fields south of Castle Drogo, up on Dartmoor, where we drove this morning. But only to the car park there. Then turned round and  came back. At least I made a stop in Moretonhampstead at the deli to buy the famous cheese straws that Robin used to love.

I heat them up to have with his salad lunch but actually they have lost their place in the annals of the cheese straw olympics. They are stale and a bit small and mean on the cheese  and overloaded with chilli. He appreciates them even if he has forgotten their provenance in our history.

That's the trouble - it's almost impossible to go anywhere now without remembering how different  it was last year.....last month....last week....yesterday.

August 2015 Robin was still doing the washing up. Driving the car. Picking tomatoes at the allotment. Making Biscotti. I could leave him on his own for a whole evening. To get his own supper.

And we had started the tortuous mystery tour into the realms of what could be the matter with his right shoulder and arm and hand....I knew in my bones ( and from Google) it was more than a frozen shoulder - our brilliant body worker had alerted us to the fact  that it was something neurological - but it took forever to get the medics to rule out everything else....their job I suppose.

But like the tight fat bales of hay all that is rolled up in last year's harvest and there's only tonight and then tomorrow to live through. 

So now I must go and do Robin's teeth for him - standing and spitting out at the kitchen sink -where he will be tomorrow morning - only someone else will be doing it then. Which I don't mind at all. And more importantly neither does he. For which I am truly grateful. 

This afternoon the dear friend who took him out for a drive, bringing back a trailing red begonia, said "It was fun....he was no trouble at all..."

And this evening, as he was leaving, after driving him and feeding him, dear friend/carer says "I enjoyed it - he is so appreciative.."

Something else I  never imagined....just a different way of making a contribution ....the round bale of hay rolling on .....getting fatter and fatter....  harvesting  all that love in its path.