May 2 - Skyline

I usually think of skylines as cityscapes ... this was taken at the garden center.

Aging gracefully

Looks like the issue which has sucked up so much of our time here in the Middle of Nowhere may be resolving itself, albeit slowly. One of the things which has come up for me, watching this situation, is how very much I don't want to put my children through a similar one.

I'm not saying my progeny wouldn't be willing to step in and manage my affairs if I were suddenly incapacitated. My husband would, of course, be first in line, if he were able. But what if he and I were suddenly incapacitated at the same time? Any one of us can be impacted by a random and life-changing accident, at any time. Some things are out of our control.

But most things are well within our abilities to attend to, to be responsible for, to take care of … so someone else won't have to.

My friend whose birthday cake I made yesterday (isn't it pretty?) will be 60 this week. I will be 61 at the end of the month (May 25, mark your calendars now!). We were talking about how our 40s and 50s had been pretty okay, all in all. My 30s were chaotic – I got sober when I was 39 – but hers were good. But this new decade is, um, challenging.

She's just discovered a chronic health issue which needs to be treated for the rest of her life. Nothing that can't be managed, but she's having trouble adjusting her dosage and managing the side effects.

I'm hooked on Aleve because of joint and muscle pain in my hip and shoulder. My left foot swells dramatically if I forget the daily Lasix. Sometimes it's difficult to get in and out of my car.

My friend suggested I take up yoga. Again. I've been an irregular yoga student for decades, but have never managed to make it a habit. She has. She simply gets up, does her practice and moves – moves – into her very busy and active day. Every day.

I start my day right here, sitting on my ass in front of a screen, drinking coffee and listening to the birds. Which is fun and all, and even peaceful. I'm a lark and my husband is an owl, so I feel completely justified in taking these early morning hours for me, me, me.

But she's right about the yoga. My excuse for not doing it is that even some of the simplest poses are difficult for me. My bigness gets in the way. But if practicing yoga, even a little bit, will help me move into old age with more independence and without needing my children's assistance, then I need to pay attention to that.

Sadie says it so much better. I've just written a long, rambling post (so what's new?) when I should have just pointed you to my inspiration for today. (Be sure to read her "About" page, too.) Sadie is my friend's daughter and is the in-house yogi for the Clif Bar company. I'm so glad I learned in AA to keep an open mind and to remain teachable. I'd hate to be one of those old lady dogs who can't learn new tricks, especially from a smart young pup like Sadie.

The sun is up. Time to salute it.

May 1 - Peace

Left to right: early May morning, the Greenbrier River, a Peace rose (my grandmother's favorite).

The theme for May is PLAY!

I bet the NaBloPoMo organizers didn't have this in mind when they decided to make May about play. Those adorable, playful characters from our childhood memories of Winnie the Pooh must be on something, right?

A quick Google search also turned up a shorter list of disordered characters with suggested medications, but I like this one better. And since it's all over the place, I never did find the original source to give credit. But I tried!

I get to play a little bit today. A friend's birthday is Thursday and we're celebrating tomorrow with a float down the Greenbrier in rafts and kayaks followed by dinner. I volunteered to bring the cake (mmmm, cake) and since I'm working tomorrow and can't bake it at the garden center, today I get to PLAY in the kitchen. May, play, birthday, YAY!

As I said yesterday in my photo post, I'm rarely sad. In fact the only times lately I've felt any kind of melancholy are when I'm outside doing something garden-y and I want to tell my dad, or send him a picture. He was my long-distance gardening partner. He'd be so proud of the horseradish and I know he would love the idea of getting 31 bags of free straw!

He played all the time, everything he did was touched with a sense of delight. A trip to the hardware store turned into a scavenger hunt, and a trip to the hospital was an opportunity to trot out his old jokes for new nurses, therapists, housekeepers and lab techs. Even when life got hard and painful and difficult he was still a big flirt and a fun-loving guy and a great example of how to live life playfully.

Who helps you play?

April 30 - Something that makes you sad

This was such a hard photo prompt to interpret. I'm not a sad person, and I don't go around looking for sad. I'm not trying to be Pollyanna or anything, but everything that happens has a reason and a lesson. Why be sad about that?

At any rate, because I didn't want to break my streak (can't believe I've done a photo a day every day this year! Thanks, Chantelle!), here's my attempt. It makes me sad that all the people in those pictures (we call it the grandchildren's gallery) live so far away from me.

Dedicated to Anna and Mark

When I had the falling out with my face-to-face gardening mentors last year, I turned to Farmer Google for much of the food production knowledge I needed. Two of the best resources I found were Anna and Mark. Mark is actually the nephew of a good friend, so I knew about the blog long ago and occasionally looked at it. But within the last year I've begun reading it regularly and have learned so much from them.

They live even more in the middle of nowhere than I do, and have thus learned to be extremely resourceful. I thought of Mark yesterday when I was on the ground trying to fix my lawnmower. Because I don't have a workbench and am not much of a fixer, I had to scrounge around in every closet in the house before I found ONE wire coat hanger. Like duct tape, coat hangers (or any other kind of heavy-duty wire) are indispensable in the toolbox. I was able to elevate and tie up the rod which had come loose and finish mowing the front yard, making only left turns (the rod is bent and scrapes the right front tire if I turn right). The neighborhood lawnmower fixer will take a look at it – again – when he gets a chance, but for now I can at least cut the grass (and add the clippings to the compost pile).

The dill has self-seeded and is popping up everywhere. I sprinkled the center of the herb bed with saved seed, none of which germinated, but there are plenty of baby plants in two flower beds that I will be moving to the herb garden. This is something I think Anna would delight in as much as I do – free food! I planted dill from transplants two years ago, and it has been growing itself every since.

The onions are ready to walk. These Egyptian onion sets actually came from Anna and Mark's farm. I knew NOTHING about Egyptian onions when I planted them. Now that they're growing new sets on the upper leaves of the plants, I realize I probably should have been eating every other plant, rather than waiting to see what happens. But since they're maturing, I will wait until the sets are ready to share with other gardeners I know. There's something magical (to a gardener, anyway) about food that reproduces without human intervention. (See dill in the previous paragraph … heh.)

The big bonanza this weekend, and one I'm sure Anna, especially, will appreciate, was straw, the secret ingredient to a good garden. Straw enriches the soil, improves the tilth and cuts weeding chores to a bare minimum.

I bought 10 bales of straw from a local farmer last weekend, and he said I could rake up all the loose straw on the floor of the barn and bag it up – free – if I wanted it. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I enlisted the help of the husband for this job. We spent a good two or three hours moving pallets and raking the perfectly good straw beneath them into THIRTY-ONE garbage bags. I'm guessing each bag holds about a bale and a quarter. All we had to provide was gas for the truck, the bags and our own labor for a yield of about 40 bales of straw (plus the 10 I'd already bought). 

I feel RICH.

Two and a half bags went on the asparagus bed, which got a good kill mulch two summers ago and is just now sprouting a few weeds. I'm tempted to only plant tomatoes in the big garden this year (I put a kill mulch on a third of the garden last fall, in preparation for the tomatoes) and use this straw to improve the remaining unplanted parts. Except I really, REALLY want fresh edamame. And squash. And maybe a few green beans. Heh.

At any rate, it's too wet (still) to do any planting today, so I have time to think about Garden Plan B. I'd hate for all this straw to rot in the bags. It would do so much more good if it rotted in the garden!

Anyway. Thank you, Anna and Mark, for mentoring this old lady farmer from your middle of nowhere to mine. I'm grateful beyond measure. And if you, too, want to be mentored, be sure to add their blog to your RSS feed and pre-order Anna's book, which will be shipping later this year. (And/or download – for a buck each – any of her monthly titles or other e-books.)

April 29 - Circle

Mmmm, freshly made mozzarella. It's in the fridge cooling – pizza for dinner!