When I married into the Manzke family, I found that one winter activity they did was jigsaw puzzles. I think I had attempted one once in my life but found we didn’t have a large enough table for a puzzle so that one was never solved.

Bob taught me how to start a puzzle. When turning over the many pieces, extract the edges and put them together first.

It wasn’t until we moved here on Miller Road that Bob and I took up doing winter jigsaw puzzle ourselves.

Today was the first of the 2019-2020 season. It came to us as a gift for my August birthday from a friend named Susan and is 500 pieces.

These days our pieces are larger in size, but fewer in number. Only on rare occasions will we do 1000 piece puzzles. Five hundred and even three hundred work better for us these days.

So we’re off, with one puzzle under our belt, though it’s too early. In many past years, we didn’t start until December, after fall farm work was finished, but nothing is ordinary anymore, especially the weather.

Now it’s time to box this puzzle up and bring out a second. The season has had a good start.

Copyright © 2019 Susan Manzke, All rights reserved