{"id":3224,"date":"2017-10-31T11:43:06","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T15:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/?p=3224"},"modified":"2017-11-10T10:52:52","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T14:52:52","slug":"the-frost-is-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/?p=3224","title":{"rendered":"No Denying Winter is Coming"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vibrant yellow leaves swirled down and down\u00a0until they landed around a\u00a0distracted\u00a0McQuade. He was raking and didn’t notice the new additions to his growing pile.\u00a0He was taking the afternoon off to rake after\u00a0visiting a\u00a0friend that morning who was at\u00a0home in hospice care.<\/p>\n

McQuade had visited\u00a0Justin and his wife Shannon earlier that morning.\u00a0They had a wonderful time drinking coffee in the sunlit kitchen and reminiscing about college days. He’d known both of them for most of his adult life. He was Justin’s best man.\u00a0\u00a0After several hours of pleasant chit chat,\u00a0Justin got tired and Shannon put him to bed for a nap.\u00a0That was the cue for McQuade to leave. Shannon broke down in tears at the door. McQuade hugged her. Again he said he would do anything for her and the girls. What else could he say?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Driving home, his mind elsewhere, \u00a0he almost drove through a stop sign and then a red light. It was good he didn’t have to go far. When he pulled into the yard, he decided raking leaves might be all he could handle at the moment. And it was such a beautiful day at least he’d be outside.<\/p>\n

McQuade raked for a half-hour or so before he noticed the tomatoes.\u00a0\u00a0He had forgotten all about the garden. Back in September, he harvested what he thought was the last of the tomatoes, then put the garden out of mind. But there were the tomatoes plants, still hanging on,\u00a0\u00a0wildly overgrown and laden with quite a few green tomatoes.<\/p>\n

Every year it was the same thing.\u00a0The late crop\u00a0 would come forth and not have time to ripen before the heavy frosts. It\u00a0always seemed like such a\u00a0waste.<\/p>\n

He leaned his rake against the fenceand fumbled in his pocket for a pipe and tobacco. The pipe\u00a0was a leaf raking tradition handed down by his father. As the wisps of smoke curled up from the newly lit bowl,\u00a0there’s no denying winter is coming, <\/em>he thought.<\/em><\/p>\n

copyright 2017 Christopher Donahue<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vibrant yellow leaves swirled down and down\u00a0until they landed around a\u00a0distracted\u00a0McQuade. He was raking and didn’t notice the new additions to his growing pile.\u00a0He was taking the afternoon off to rake after\u00a0visiting a\u00a0friend that morning who was at\u00a0home in hospice … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3224"}],"version-history":[{"count":41,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3250,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224\/revisions\/3250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}