Hopefully this is my last week of just making stuff up. I’m planning to order seeds next week and do some major renovation in my attached greenhouse. It’s a train wreck out there. All the yard art, clay pots from summer, containers of fertilizers, broken bags of soil, uncoiled hoses and various tools are helter-skelter. It will take the better part of a day to make sense of the situation.

How I wish that this disaster was not a microcosm of my entire life. Honestly, I have more than one junk drawer. I have, however, spent the last few chilly days organizing my desk in preparation for tax return season.

On Sunday morning, Violet needed to go back to school. For her first time, she drove on the ferry and on the highway. It was a safe and uneventful trip except she left the keys in the car on the boat. The dog promptly locked us out. My coat, spare key and phone were naturally inside. It took a policeman and several boat personnel to use every possible trick. For some reason they do not have a Slim Jim. Just as they were about to reload and take us back on a return trip a miracle happened and we were on our way.

I finally did haul my Rosemary inside. It has experienced several freezes but still, shockingly, lives. Once in a while one will survive a winter outside in a protected location with a southern exposure. I suppose with the changing climate we will have them in perennial beds.

When Violet and I were in Rome above the Forum on the Palatine Hill, we saw enormous Rosemaries. They were the size of shrubs.

Like a crazy person I loaded my dump truck with two separate two-ton loads of native pea stone. It didn’t look like much and certainly did not fill in my driveway like I had hoped. However, the moving of said gravel is not something an elderly woman should do. I had two visits to the chiropractor in as many days.

I received a nice letter from Kristy Kingsbury Henshaw this week. She was doing “death cleaning” and came across a column I wrote in November of 2010. “Death cleaning” is a Swedish woman’s idea to get rid of all your “stuff” so your loved ones don’t have to deal with it.

Anyway, the column was written right after the death of my father as sort of an obituary. Thank you so much, Kristy. I had forgotten I wrote it and it was nice to remember him again in that way.

The rash decision to kill Major General Qassem Soleimani is all over print and visual media. No one is particularly sorry, however, the ramifications are significant. I genuinely am frightened. During the other scary events in my life — the Bay of Pigs, JFK’s assassination, Gulf of Tonkin, Iran hostage situation and 911, I felt like there were actually sane people in charge. Now, not so much. Trump’s threats to bomb Iranian cultural sites are hopefully a bridge too far. For starters, it’s a war crime. I thought only ISIS and the Taliban were capable of that.

Does the man have no sense of decency or historical pride? The Persian civilization has been around for millennia. Will the military people refuse such an order or is that ever done? Already, 40 people have died in a stampede at the general’s funeral. Trump has succeeded in uniting the Iranians against us!

Between the writing of this and the Wednesday morning pickup of the column, shots have been fired. Lord, have mercy.