Summer winding down

 

I stitch or read. Think about writing. We play cards and listen to music. The most remarkable thing? The boy has taken a liking to Jazz. Old school jazz. Oscar Peterson, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins. Of course, he heard it all from the days when he was in the crook of my arm.

When the sun gets past the yardarm and there's some shade we enjoy a nearby pool. Just us. They go back to school next Friday.

Away for a while

 

 

Biding time...

...is better than just waiting.

 She's tolerating it much better than I expected. At first, she walked as if she'd stepped in shit, picking her leg up and shaking it. We distracted her and she started moving around putting the bound leg down.  Only a half hour at a time, at first. Then gradually working up to eight hours a day. I know that she still has pain. Just hoping this gives her a little respite.

This morning she took a few halting steps after I removed the brace, but on her foot, almost normally.  Did I imagine it? Time will tell.

I was able to snag a doctor's visit today also. I wasn't expecting xrays and, without meaning to, the tech made me swear and cry. The PA who followed up with the new xrays and my recent MRI asked if I had done any rodeo.

 Good news - my hip bones are fine. Bad news - discs at L4-L5 and L5-S1 are bulging out and impinging on many nerves. She gathered up all my other symptoms and seemed confident that epidural injections in those places will take care of the worst of my symptoms. Whatever you say, doc. Bring it on.

I watered the deck farm when I got home, trying to make it rain. Maybe later tonight but the plant people were looking limp. The backyard has pretty much gone to wild hell. Then I leaned out over the railing and saw this. Now to figure out how to encourage them to take the joint over

While I wait for the wheels of insurance bureaucracy to grind, I started a chocolate heart. 

Last week, I was gifted a tiny box with four chocolate truffles in it. I ate one just before I went to sleep. Tucked the box closed and put it on the headboard. In the morning, the three truffles were gone. 

I ate them in my sleep!

Waiting

Camilla's leg brace is supposed to come today. It remains to be seen if she will tolerate it. I'd love to see her out in the front yard chasing her tail and her shadow, but how to keep her from running off, if she can? If she won't tolerate it, will surgery fix it? Make it right?  The medication they gave her has finally worn off. I know she feels pain at the injury because she licks it after hobbling around. 

I'm waiting for a call back from the spine doctor. Can they dig? Will they? Is there a drug that won't erase who I am along with the pain? 

We wait. 

We keep each other company.

We dream. 

 

A gardener's heart

I miss gardening. It's hard work if done right. The digging, the hauling the planting, and watering. All of it is beyond me this season. And I admit that summers in Georgia will get to you. I take it in small sips. 

I don't mean growing roses or pansies, that I can manage within limits. I miss growing something you can harvest and use. Planting seeds and bringing something to the kitchen to serve and eat is a special kind of magic. If I lived in a state where it was legal, I would be in ganja glory. There is a weed that takes some coddling. 

My people on both sides grew or peddled produce. Victory gardens were not a wartime novelty. Mom's father sold fruit and vegetable from a cart in the streets of Providence - that's all I know about him. 

My father's family were tenant farmers in Connecticut and ran a roadside produce shed. As a very young child, I was left there in the care of my aunt or uncle. I played in the dirt with potatoes, eating all the freshly picked berries I could hold. I snapped beans and shelled peas with my grandmother before I was in kindergarten. A life in the dirt. 

Tomatoes and broccoli are really all I've ever gotten right. When I showed the boys the two fat stalks of broccoli I managed to wring out of the soil, they ran and hid. Both of them wildly averse to eating vegetables, I gave that struggle up when their pediatrician said, "If they eat some kind of fruit every day, that's good enough."

So I got the broccoli all to myself. Steamed it in a Pyrex bowl in the microwave. Butter, a little salt. Colin yelled, "What's that STINK!". I sat at the table and enjoyed it down to the last morsel. In the bottom of the bowl were three fat, well-poached worms, green as the broccoli had been. No extra charge for the protein.

  

I'm disappointed with the Wood Chip pile Chaos garden out front. My pumpkins accidentally got mowed, The watermelons died from lack of water. I forgot they were out there in the weeds. The balance between perennials and weeds is out of whack. The tall stuff is poke weed. Privet is popping up everywhere and there's plenty of poison ivy and some low creeping stuff that carpets the ground and sticks to you like burrs. The cats won't even hunt in there anymore. I'm tempted to call Jose and order another truckload of wood chips and just bury it all. 

Out back on the dye deck, the dumpster rescues flourish without any attention from me at all besides a good soak if we don't get rain on the fifth day. Lately, it's been every night.

I think this is Bougainvillea. I know it will die if I don't bring it back inside in the fall. Good luck.

This is Swedish ivy on the steroids of the heat and humidity of our summer. 

 My lone tomato plant. Those are about the size of a quarter and I will eat them as they ripen.  One by one.