2004—Haute Courtoisie
  • Valerie has produced many yummies in her vegetable garden (when she has stayed in town long enough to maintain it: the needs, first of her aged parents, then of our non-elderly grandchildren, have competed with its welfare). And my encroaching disability has robbed me of the capacity to share in her labors.

 0009GardenFence
Valerie’s veggie space
But when we came to Utah, we signed up for extended family closeness, dammit, and even the eternal sweetness of our status as a couple (which remains to us, and would have, either way), with all its associated blessings, doesn’t replace that, at least in the short term. So, it was with figurative storm-clouds of regret parked above our heads that we returned to Keokuk for Christmas. The dumb way. We have resolved not to repeat the hivernal experience. We flew to St Louis, rented a car, and drove the 167 miles up to Keokuk in a signature Mississippi-valley winter ice-storm. Would we be ungrateful to observe that serial near-death highway experiences didn’t ameliorate our depression?
0039SM
Haute Courtoisie 		Bottom line: we started looking into the possibility of moving to the wide-open housing market of Keokuk: if the Ralstons won’t stay with the old folks, maybe the old folks will move in on the Olsens.

Very early in our search, we (well, mainly I) fell in love with this historic house at 206 High Street, just two doors northwest of Debbie’s and Tony’s super-fixer-upper. In an alarming number of ways, it was Timbaloo, all over again.
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