Smoke from Canada slowed us down for a full two weeks. Two days ago we awoke to cool, clean air; time for a bike ride.

This is the longest ride we’ve accomplished this year and it included some steep terrain. Our longest ever was a little over 17 miles, but was pre-knee injuries. Getting back to this level has been a long haul. Michael could ride by himself, but he says it’s too lonely, so we challenge each other. We’ve been exercising together for over 30 years. It hasn’t kept us from the bane of arthritis, but we’re still moving.

Biking (and walking) gets us out to see the sights. Butterflies flutter.

The corn is in silk.

The wild cucumber climbs any convenient lump: branch, bush, or stump.

Foxtails flash bronze as we fly by.

I had to look up this pretty plant: purple loosestrife. I’ve only seen it in my neighbor’s ditch. He has a boat. Imagine that. We saw even more beautiful flowers on our ride, but I can’t manage to pedal and take photos at the same time. Believe me. I’ve tried. These are from Zeke walks.

Last night an amazing thunderstorm blew through, complete with hail and high winds. One lightning strike came so close it nearly knocked me out of bed. I had nightmares of shredded tomato plants. Today, armored in long sleeves and clippers, I was prepared for disaster. I removed some broken vines, trimmed a lot of suckers, but there wasn’t as much damage as I feared. The tomato patch may have been mostly saved due to being behind a mass of grape vines and also pretty dense. As a reward for trimming vines, I spied our first ripe fruit. To show how much I love him, I saved a few for Michael. Michael dug the patch. I planted the starts. We both weed.

Onions. We love onions. High in vitamin C, they last us all winter and through early spring. Michael plants them and harvests them (bending over is still really hard on my knees) and he puts them in the sun to dry every day for a week. We take them into the garage at night. Then I make braids and into the basement they go. The ones that have soft spots I set aside and we use those first. Onion quiche. Onion soup. Onion pasta sauce with beet greens. Once we ran out of onions and bought some at the store. We stopped eating onions. We each have our separate tasks in growing, harvesting, and storing them, based on physical limitations and abilities. We both weed.

We have great incentives to take care of ourselves and each other. A side effect of doing stuff is being able to do stuff, and then having stuff to share. And the food is really good.