My Closest Neighbour

Want to meet my closest neighbour? I don't actually know if my neighbour is a he or a her, but I've been calling it "her". I haven't named "her" either, but she has a nice lace-like pattern on her abdomen, so let's call her "Lacey".

Lacey lives about a foot from my nose when I'm on my bunk. I could easily touch her if there were not a pane of glass between us. But if there were not a pane of glass between us I guarantee she would have been relocated long before now!

She started out as a tiny speck, with a body the size of a gnat's. She worked industriously to lay down a fine web which she repairs nightly. Every day she snared a gnat or two, wrapping them in silk before she had her meal. At that point she had no noticeable markings. She was just a spider.

I watched her day by day, as she grew rapidly to the size of a pin-head, and eventually brown and yellow stripes began to appear on her legs.

She hangs upside down in her web, curled somewhat as she naps. But all it takes is the wiggling of an insect in her web and she's instantly alert. Over the weeks she's grown so that her abdomen is the size of a small pea. Her face and eyes are now apparent - yellow face, black sharp eyes. Sort of cute really, if you aren't a fly.

Gnats are now "popcorn" but not much food for a spider her size. When it's been two or three days between substantial meals I begin to worry about her and I confess to dropping swatted flies into her web on several occasions. Okay, I admit I never thought I'd be feeding a spider. Spiders creep me out big time. A small one dropped down onto me from the ceiling a few days ago and brought me bolt upright screaming like a banshee!

Yesterday I gave her a fly which was dead when I found it. She tried it and threw it from the web. Today a fresher specimen was eagerly accepted. She hadn't had a fly for three days and her abdomen was shrunken and flat. She must have been pretty hungry. She had just finished it when a fly was snagged in her web. She pounced on it and wrapped it and the meal continued. She must have thought it was Thanksgiving! Dessert was a gnat.

Tonight she is fat and presumably happy, hanging head down in her web. I wonder how large she will grow? Will she find spidery love and leave a new generation of spiders? Stay tuned. :)

Long Awaited Day

Today, nine weeks to the day from when he fell and broke his leg, Tony eased down the stairs and walked around in the yard. He also figured out how to get into the truck seat and back down again. Woo-hoo!

I tackled that ceiling job yesterday, or one of them anyway. Two of them anyway - oh, three of them. I pulled down the stained paper over the banquette, where we'd had the leak, after we'd repaired that whole section. Then I caulked the seam between the new ceiling panel Ian installed and the original one. That has to dry for at least 36 hours before I can do anything further.

Then I re-caulked around the roof vent/skylight where the old caulking had come out. Then I mixed up sky blue paint from the white and dark blue paints and painted the area over the "bedroom". Once that was dry I sponged some clouds onto the blue, because I couldn't wait to see what it was going to look like. This was tough on my not-so-strong shoulder and upper arm muscles, and my neck. I had a hard time sleeping last night, but I had the reward of hearing an owl hooting from somewhere nearby at about 2:00 am. I've been down most of today, but I have been pleased to look at my lovely blue sky ceiling with fluffy white clouds. I need to do more to the clouds, but once it's all done I will try to take a picture.

I was concerned that the pattern on the vinyl ceiling would look really weird once it was painted, but surprise the pattern looks like a layer of thin clouds higher up.

Once my arms are recovered I will try repairing the ceiling over the banquette. I've got some of that roll-on fiber moosh which hopefully will cover the difference in the two panels. I've always thought that stuff was grotesque looking, but this is white, with a tiny tan fleck, so it should be unobtrusive enough once it's on.

But now, even on the grey days in winter we have a blue sky to look at!

A Year in the Life...

A year ago today we pulled the Tin Palace out of our driveway in Calgary, headed west. It's been quite a year. We haven't missed the big city, though we have missed seeing Ian every couple of days. I miss our shopping trips and the sushi we used to share, but mostly our long conversations of a philosophical bent.

We've had a lovely year, barring a few pipe and plumbing mishaps with the TP, and that nasty bone-breaking thing Tony did back in June. He is now cautiously walking around in the TP without the walker, but he's certainly not ready for shopping jaunts or herding the cat. The silver lining to that cloud was an extended visit with each of our boys. We really enjoyed their company.

Living in 157 sq ft of space hasn't been as challenging as you might think. I like things to be tidy, which means that I constantly weed out anything we are done with and straighten up the rest. Cleaning is easy but constant, two things out of place and the place looks like a tornado hit it.

The only reno project on the TP which did not end up performing well was the textured paper we put on the ceiling to cover the vinyl paneling that's there now. The paper has peeled and fallen off in most spots, including where the ceiling was patched over the dining table.

I got out the paint and bought a roller and tray today. Hopefully tomorrow I can begin painting the ceiling. I am going to paint the area over our bunks in a "sky with clouds" motif. Don't know how that will work with the slight texture of the paneling, but it couldn't look worse than it does now. I will try to post pictures once I'm finished.

The summer has been wonderful, with the kind of abundance from the garden and orchard I haven't experienced since I was a girl in New Mexico and Arizona, where market gardens and orchards surrounded us.

We've enjoyed watching the baby birds brought to the feeder by their parents day after day. The different birds have different parenting styles. The sparrows are the most fun to watch, since a parent will often be mobbed by three or four frantically begging babies - babies who are perfectly able to pick feed out of the feeder or off the ground themselves. But they must like home cookin' because they beg relentlessly until the parents get fed up and beat the tar out of them.

Maud and Emmett continue to bring their two chicks to the feeder most days. The chicks are now about 2/3rds the size of their parents. I think the larger one is a male, since it often moves away from the others and assumes a watchful stance, which is typical behaviour for a male quail.

Right now we have a volunteer sunflower growing near the bird feeder. Some seeds get missed, and this one went on to grow into a nifty little sun face. At the back of the TP are some volunteer snapdragons which have come up and bloomed without any encouragement whatsoever. This morning I was once more astounded by the velvety texture of newly-opened purple petunia blossoms in my container garden. What pleasure my flowers have brought me this summer.

As summer winds down we are beginning to look forward to the arrival of our snowbird friends from across the country. Summer has many pleasures, but we miss the companionship of the dozen or so retiree couples who stay here during the winter. The weather may get cold, but the coffee is hot and the company is amiable. If you are lonesome in the winter here you've only yourself to blame.

It's been a year of firsts, a year of adventure, observation and discovery. We've learned that life is best lived in the moment, without wasting energy regretting the past, or worrying about the future. Anticipate joy, experience contentment.

Salad Days

One of the delightful perks of living here is that we are surrounded by orchards and market gardens. We have been eating well, the fruit bowl is always heaped, the fridge is full of vegies.

One of our favorite summer dinners is a sort of a Greek salad. Greek salad has red onions, but we don't particularly like raw onion, so I leave them out. We are happy to eat this salad twice a week, so I thought I'd share the recipe. I bought the ingredients for tonight's salad from the stand about a mile south of us. The tomatoes came in from the field as I selected the peppers. The peppers and cukes are grown next door.

Ingredients:

1/2 each large green sweet pepper, large yellow sweet pepper

2 red "pimento" peppers. These are small (not even tennis ball size), deeply lobed, flat and very dark intense red with an intense flavour.

2 medium ripe tomatoes

1 medium cucumber

4 ounces feta cheese - I used an "Italian-style" one with basil and tomato.

half dozen Kalamata olives per serving.

1 TBS extra virgin olive oil

1 TBS apple cider vinegar

1/2 tsp Mrs Dash garlic and herb seasoning

salt to taste

Method:

Wash vegetables. Cut peppers into cubes, core and cube tomatoes, peel cucmber, cut lengthwise in halves, then each half into four lengthwise sections. Cut across to dice.

Mix cut up vegetables in a bowl, add Mrs Dash and feta cheese. Stir. Mix olive oil and vinegar together and pour over salad, stir.

Spoon portions into bowls, serve with bread for soaking up juices.

Makes two large dinner portions or four salad portions

Magic Happens...

At night I lie and look out my window at the stars. The skies here are thick with stars one never sees in the city. During the Perseid meteor shower, earlier in August, I took my sleeping bag out to the chaise lounge and lay in the dark. At first the meteors were infrequent, but by midnight they were more or less constant, one or two every three or four minutes. Even after I went inside I saw several meteors streak across the sky.

Somehow this brings back a memory of a July evening almost 30 years ago, when we camped in a park in Oklahoma with the boys. We'd been living on an island in northern BC for years and were on our way south for a family reunion. We were camped among huge oak trees, it was humid and still and as it grew dark stars came out among the trees as well as in the skies.

Robert Frost wrote:

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.

Our northern boys had never seen fireflies before. It was as magical as if fairies had arrived in the garden. Magic happens unexpectedly and leaves a glow.

The Amazing Two-Legged Man

Tuesday Tony had an appointment with the surgeon who put all the hardware in his leg seven weeks ago. It's about a 45 minute drive to the hospital. We anticipated maybe a half-hour at the hospital, and 45 minutes back. It was not to be. The surgeon had been called to the OR for an emergency, and we had to wait several hours.

But the good news is that Tony's leg is healing well and he was given permission to begin walking with a walking frame. That's welcome news! He's now inching his way from his bunk to the bathroom on his own two feet, plus the granny walker.

He could move faster if Salvador didn't get in the way. Sal's very stubborn and once he's settled it takes a great deal of motivation to make him move. He'd get laid down and not want to move, so Tony started tossing a cat treat (a "cookie") out of the walker's path, and that would get Sal to jump up to get the cookie. Trouble is he quickly figured out that if he gets in the way of the walker he'll get a cookie. So now he throws himself beneath the walker as soon as Tony reaches for it! He certainly has us trained.

Red Letter Day

It was a beautiful day. Sunny, cool, breezy, a perfect day. But what made it perfect was that we figured out how to get Tony down the stairs, into the wheelchair and across the lawn to sit in the shade. It was the first time he'd been outside in six weeks, if you don't count being carried from ambulance to bed on a gurney.

I realized that while he'd been as brown as a nut when he had his accident, six weeks of lying inside has left him pale and wan-looking. Poor baby. Hopefully he'll be able to be outside a bit most days now.

I've realized that the park is like an ant hill in the summer. People are in and out constantly. Some stay a single night, others are here for a few days or a week. A site which was filled when we went to bed is empty when we get up, or vice versa.

The peaches in the commons are now ripening. The farm next door is producing beautiful peppers, red, green, yellow and the long very hot banana peppers. They also have okra and squash. I've been busy drying those peaches and nectarines. I'm on my third drier load now, each load holding about five pounds of fruit.

The days are ending with spectacular sunsets. Ahhhhhh..... the days are too short.

Drippy Elbows

It's just too bad. You can't eat a peach in this place without getting a bath in peach juice! It runs in a little river from your peach-in-hand, down your arm to drip off your elbow. Sticky stuff. You have to sponge it off or attract flies and hornets all day long. Don't you wish you had this terrible problem?

I went to the orchard today and (in a moment of wild optimism) bought a box of peaches and a box of nectarines. It's time to get serious about drying fruit! The farmer was a chatty soul and when he learned I was buying the fruit to dry said he dries fruit himself. He showed me his drier which he was filling with slices of peaches.

He offered me boxes of "seconds", fruit with a flaw on the skin, for $5.00 a box. A box contains 22 lbs (10 kilos) of fruit. So I came home with 22 pounds of peaches, 22 pounds of nectarines and five pounds of perfect "sunrise" apples for the amazing sum of $11.00. Good grief. I have NO PLACE to put all of this fruit! I have NO IDEA what possessed me!

We'll eat a good deal of it. I'll make room in the fridge for several pounds, and this afternoon I will go through and separate the ripe from the not-yet-ripe, and begin drying the ripe. (Oh boy, oh boy oh boy!)

On other fronts, things like this magnificent shrub with its gorgeous purple flowers continue to bloom like mad and the Rusty blackbirds now have a dozen or so youngsters in the flock. We had 25 Rusties in the yard this morning, diligently eating seeds and digging out grubs and other insects. They have begun to be aggressive towards the smaller birds, which I don't like. They rush at and peck any small bird that comes within a couple of feet, and I saw one Rusty grab a baby sparrow by the wing and shake the bejabbers out of it before turning it loose. But sparrows are aggressive too, and one little female, pecked by a Rusty five times her size turned on it and gave as good as she got! She had the Rusty on the run in a hurry.

The most exciting news, as far as I am concerned, is that my favorite pair of quail, Maud and Emmett, are NOT childless after all! They are both very small. Maud walks with a limp and a wobble, and they are obviously at the bottom of the pecking order as all the other quail chase them away during the covey's prime feeding times in the early morning and late afternoon. So they have come to the feeder mid-day all summer. They are always together, and they have grown pretty tolerant of my presence in a chair nearby.

A couple of weeks ago they started coming at different times, Emmett would come around by himself and feed, an hour or so later Maud would show up, alone. This continued for several days until about noon several days ago they came together, with two tiny chicks! They were hardly larger than sparrows, and in fact to start with I thought there were three chicks, until the third one turned out to be a sparrow.

The chicks are a bit bigger now, the size of baby chickens, but with longer legs and skinnier. I am so tickled that Em and Maud have their own little family. The babies are so cute, scratching in the grass under the feeder for seed. I have tried to get a picture but so far haven't been in the right place at the right time. I'll keep trying, because I want to share them with you.

Now I have to go sort peaches and nectarines and get to work!

In a Word - August

When we last left our heroine, she was held captive by the evil banker, who was threatening to repossess the fruit bowl, foreclose the mortgage on her tiny tin can and throw her into the street unless she .... wait a minute, wait a minute! That's not right! (For one thing there's no mortgage.)  

The villain, as I recall more clearly now, was "Exhaustion", something movie stars suffer and get checked into posh Hollywood hospitals for. Us common folk just go to bed and get a few nights sleep - and hire help. 

Ian and Zak insisted that we get some help, and Cathy recommended a local agency called "Interior Senior Care", a non-profit organization which provides services which help older people, or the disabled, remain independent and in their own homes. Can we say; Day versus Night? 

My "Assistant" is Brenda, a lovely and very pleasant young woman. She came for a visit last week and yesterday she picked me (and a pile of laundry) up and off to town we went. In two hours this whirlwind had seven loads of laundry washed and folded into bags, we had gone grocery shopping, gotten water, gone to the pharmacy and gone to the ATM. I lifted nothing, carried nothing. 

It was wonderful! When I got home I was not so tired I was sick. I did not collapse for the rest of the day. I cooked a meal, put away the laundry and food and even defrosted the fridge! 

Tony is now up on his wheeled walking frame. It has a seat so he can sit and roll himself to the bathroom and get to his computer etc. He is a very happy camper. He still can't put any weight on that broken leg, but he can use it to balance. He'll see the surgeon on the 14th and we'll see how much further he can push it then. 

This has been a beautiful day. It's been hot, not oppressively so, though yesterday came close as it was 38 C (100.4 F) . We've had a very brisk wind today, which kept us very comfortable. It's 2:00 pm and we have just now turned on the AC. 

As you can see Salvador is holding down summer. He says, "Itz hard werkz, but sumbuddy haz gotta do it." He's recovering from his nosy nature as well. He investigated a green stinkbug and got "stunk". The stinkbug produces a noxious (but harmless) spray which it emits at the boiling point, and Sal had his mouth and nose burned. I rushed him inside and washed his mouth and nose in cold water, and he was none the worse for wear, but he's more cautious about investigating bugs now. The striped winged ones sting and green ones burn!  

He's also been diligently watching the birds, making sure they are supervised. They've learned that he won't chase them, and the quail will walk right past him, and me, or approach us, just to get a closer look. 

We have a small flock of Rusty Blackbirds who visit daily. These birds are listed on the Audubon Watchlist as a declining species at risk. 

I was dismayed to look out the window a few mornings ago to see what appeared to be a dead Rusty lying in the grass. It was lying on its side, one wing stretched to the side, head flopped over, beak agape, eye open to the sun and unmoving. I wondered if it had hit the window of the big motorhome parked next to us and broken its neck. But then it gave its head a shake, shook the wing and hopped up onto its feet. I've seen this behaviour several times since. Sometimes they stretch out one wing and lie on their side, sometimes they lie on their belly and stretch out both wings, flinging their head backward till it touches their back. 

After seeing several of them do this, for 30-60 seconds at a time, I've decided they must be napping, and assume a "dead" posture, so that predator birds don't attack. Cats and other ground hunters hunt by sight, but if a bird doesn't move they are not likely to see it. Stationary objects are often overlooked. 

Adult Rusties have the most unusual brilliant yellow eyes with black pupils. Young birds have dark eyes. About a dozen Rusties visit, eating seed and digging insects from the grass where we have recently watered but there is only one juvenile bird among them. There should be lots more youngsters accompanying a flock of this size. There's an aggressive trapping campaign here, aimed at the huge flocks of starlings which decimate orchard fruit. I wonder if the young Rusties get mistaken for starlings during the nettings?

On a bright note, the American goldfinches have raised a brood of what appears to be four chicks, three males and a female. It was quite a sight to have all of them at the feeder at once. The purple finches, hoary redpolls and multitude of variety of sparrows continue to bring baby birds to the feeder, and we enjoy watching the begging and flapping and the parents' diligence at teaching their young what's for dinner. 

I didn't mention the watermelons - another post... 

Snips and Clips

I am in the dog house. And I've been put there by the cat. I am apparently good enough to open cans and dish out food and good enough to hang on the end of the leash when he wants to go out and read the news.  Otherwise I am persona non toucha. I have the claw and bite marks to prove it. 

Can't say I blame him. Yesterday morning at 7:30 I loaded him into the cat carrier and took him to the Torturer and his apprentices. (Known to hew-mans as "the vet") 

There they gave poor Salvador his annual physical, his vaccinations, then knocked him out with some dreadful chemical substance and cleaned his teeth. (They pulled two of them) and then while he was still comatose  they shaved off about 80% of his fur.  

He looks silly. They left his head, legs and tail unshaved. They really should have shaved his legs and left a puff on the end of a shaved tail. He would have looked just like a mini-lion. Now he just looks like a moth-eaten stuffed toy in a velvet jumper.   

He felt so sore when he came home, and I felt so sorry for him. Poor puss, he couldn't even take a drink of water. But he's eating again now, and seems comfortable, if a little more dozy than usual. 

But there's no kitty on my bed, no kitty in my lap. He now loves only his Papa and is making a point of it by snuggling up to his Papa and offering belly-rubs. Oh sure. Papa can rub the velvet belly. I'm drooling to get my hands on that apricot-coloured velvet coat and he sticks out the claws if I even come close. 

I have to sneak in a quick feel while he sleeps. See for yourself. Could you keep your hands off those soft folds? Funny. He has no stripes at skin level. The little striations you see in the picture are clipper marks. Oh, now I'm just obsessing. Time to find something else to do. 

One More Lesson

All right,

Obviously the universe has some profound lesson to teach me that I can only learn when I am absolutely bone-dead-tired. I'm afraid to ask what it is. 

Dave says he likes watching documentaries where people swim or crawl through tight spaces. I can hardly force myself to watch those. I had paralytic polio as a toddler. I lost the ability to breathe for myself and had to go into an iron lung. I don't remember it consciously but I'm claustrophobic from it. Don't like tight-necked clothes either. If I were a guy you'd never catch me in a tie. 

But forget claustrophobia. Right now a nice dark, quiet cave would be welcome. If I could sleep a week I'm sure I'd feel better. As it is I have to pull up the boots, stop my whining and get on with the dozen tasks I need to do before day's end.  

Reading today about coming up against obstacles to enlightenment, one obstacle mentioned is a feeling of resentment about who you are, what you are - or your situation. I have no problems with who I am, and I certainly feel no resentment at my poor broken husband. This has been a very difficult experience for him. But is my impatience with my limited strength and energy a form of resentment? Those limitations are part of me, a part, that according to Buddhist philosophy I chose, in order to learn lessons I had not yet learned.

 

Looked at that way, over the years I have learned what my body is capable of, and I've learned to stay within those limits. Now it seems I need to learn how to deal with what happens when I have to go beyond my comfort zone. It's no fun but if I resent it the lesson only comes harder. 

Empty Nest

I took Zak to the bus station at 6:50 am yesterday. Main Street was quiet, the air was blue with smoke from a forest fire down south, it all looked sort of nostalgic and dreamy. 

It was hard to say goodbye to him and our little nest seems empty without our two big boys to fill it up with laughter and their own special brand of masculine sweetness. 

We haven't seen enough of Zak and Mandy since they moved to Vancouver, and we miss our frequent visits with Ian, so our time together was a real pleasure. 

I had a nice post all written but pleh! It won't work. I always compose posts in Text Edit and move them over once I'm finished, since I work back and forth keeping up with other things. This time when I went to move my post it won't load in the Blogger text box, it jumps down and loads on the page below, and when saved it ends up one letter wide and 40 pages long. Who in their right mind would read a 40-page blog post, even mine? 

I was in a much better frame of mind when I wrote the post in Text Edit. This one is sort of a grumpy post; partially because Blogger is acting all weird and I don't have the patience to fiddle with it;  partially because I hurt stem to stern and partially because I am not a monkey. (Some may disagree but more on that later.)

I will add two pictures I wanted to share, one of my flower boxes and the other of the still-green but promising apricots on the old tree in the common. 

I was a little piqued the other day when I came home from town to find that some park "guests" had pulled some of the flowers in our site.

They'd also been over to the old apricot tree and helped themselves. The 'cots could certainly use a good thinning, but instead of picking individual fruits the "pickers" broke branches off the tree, then stripped the fruit off of them. It's an old tree, and already fragile. Breaking branches off of it to pick green apricots is kind of like hacking grandma's fingers off so it's easier to trim her nails. 

Most people who come through here are lovely. Courteous to a fault and so very pleasant. Many people use the back edge of our site as a path to the back of the park, which we don't mind, as long as they don't knock over or appropriate our lawn furniture. 

But you get the occasional person/group who tramps right across our site, brings their dog to poop in our yard and (honest to goodness) walks right up to our windows and peers in at us as if we were monkeys on display at the zoo! We now keep the back window blinds closed, but people walk around the end of the trailer, shade their eyes, lean into the window and squint in like they lost a nickel last week and suspect it rolled under my bed! You'd think people would have enough manners not to walk up and press their noses to your bedroom window! 

I'm trying to think of an appropriate response, and if you have a suggestion which doesn't involve firearms or fire hoses, neither of which I possess, I'd like to hear it.  I've already tried making faces, but that didn't work. They bring the family back for the free entertainment. I also told one couple that they'd have to drive around, the take-out window was closed. It didn't register. So please, nothing subtle. This is not an audience which comprehends subtleties!   

Where There Is a Will

One trait I value in myself is a certain resourcefulness. Part of this comes from a lifetime habit of frugality and training in "making-do". I was raised by parents who survived the Great Depression quite successfully and never again spent a dime without thinking several times.

In 1930 a Kilgore Texas farmer accidentally tapped into the world's largest oil reservoir in his cow pasture. His discovery marked the beginning of the East Texas Oil Boom. The tiny town of Kilgore, population 200, grew to 10,000 almost overnight. In 1931 Dad was able to get work as a roughneck in the newly discovered oil field.

For men like my Dad, who was 26 years old, it meant a steady job at $2.25 a day when jobs of any kind were scarce, children were begging door to door and former bank presidents were selling fruit on the streets of NYC.

On that $2.25 a day Dad supported 12 people, as best he could. There was himself, my mother, my sister Ruby and my brothers, identical twins who were toddlers at the time. Then there was my Mom's father, who was 70 years old and had a heart condition, Mother's younger brother Lonnie, and one of Dad's brothers who was ill and couldn't work and his wife and two children. And, last but not least, a family friend who was old and had no place to go. The kids called him "Uncle Joe".

There was no housing in Kilgore. A tent city sprang up along the river banks. Dad bought $2.00 worth of lumber. He and the men in the family built a 12 x 12 wooden floor, and plank walls four feet high. They framed in a pitched roof with 2 x 4s and tacked wagon canvas over the entire structure. He made mother a stove from a discarded oil barrel.

They had tin washtubs for washing clothes and bathing. Mother ironed with a "sad" iron, heated on the stove, using a plank set between the backs of two chairs as an ironing board. Twelve people lived in that 12 x 12 canvas-roofed shack.

They had very little, but there were millions who would have been glad to have had what they had. They ate, even if it was beans, taters, bisquits made with water and what wild foods mother and the kids could gather in the woods. Fishing in the Sabine River must have been more than a way to pass an idle afternoon. You could catch some big fish in that muddy, languorous stream, as long as you remembered not to step on a gator sunning himself on the bank. Possum and squirrel found their way into the family stew pot, along with the occasional raccoon, wild turkey and even a big turtle or two. When you are really hungry most anything starts to look a lot like dinner.

My sister recalled that she and the boys had been out making "mud pies" when a local church group came around with apples for "deserving" children. Seeing my sib's muddy hands and faces they were deemed "undeserving" and got no apple. It was a memory which haunted Ruby all of her life. She probably would have forgotten a slap but that small act of smug, self-righteousness judgement wounded her so deeply as a five-year-old that she could still feel its sting almost 80 years later.

But, I find as usual, that I have wandered off into the tangled thickets of memory, where often hang sweet fruits, but just as often conceals a thorn or two beneath the gloss of the leaves. I was saying that I am resourceful.

I have a number of medical difficulties which I will not belabor, but I have a very difficult time sleeping in any comfort. For one thing I have to sleep with the head of my bed elevated. This is not so easily done when your bed is on a platform. I'd searched high and low for a foam wedge, without any success, but for the past months I've been using a stack of pillows, shoved under the mattress. They shift up, or down. They slide sideways and squeeze out onto the floor, they pile up and solidify into baseball-sized lumps. I wake, feeling like I've slept on a pile of broken concrete.

Zak said he'd build a support and attach it to the platform. Elaborate plans were discussed and pondered. The "how" became a matter of some days' discussion. Meanwhile, I thought of the "no-gravity" lawn chaises we bought earlier in the spring. I could happily sleep in one of those. But who ever heard of such a thing? Would the Sleep Police descend on us with tin whistles splitting the night air and dump me onto the floor if I dared replace bed with chaise? Besides the chaise wouldn't fit. My bed platform is elevated about 14", and there's a shelf above. Not a lot of clearance for a chaise lounge!

Pursuing my wicked and rebellious furniture thought I went outside, flipped the legs and arms of one of the chaises flat and found that, voila! It still retained its "no-gravity" shape. I picked it up, brought it in, tossed the mattress, bedding, pillows and various bric-a-brac off my bed and put the chaise on the platform. Then I plopped my (foam) mattress on top of it and - ta-da! perfect instant hospital bed. I can elevate my head, or my feet, or both.

I slept on my highly resourceful chaise/bed last night and never woke once. I was a lot more cheerful this morning, not as many dragon scales. I guess when you are sleeping on what feels like a pile of rocks night after night, almost anything can start to look like a bed.

Snap, Crackle and Pop!

When we first pulled into Bel Air, in late August last year, there was a gigantic motor home in the spot next to us. The "campers" were a couple our own age, and the nicest people you could imagine, Claude and Pat. After a couple of weeks they went on their way. We were sad to see them go. Some people you just feel at home with from the minute you meet.

Early spring and they were back, slipping into the snowbird community with ease and good humor. But, like the tide, soon they were gone again.

A couple of weeks ago, actually the day after Tony broke his leg, they pulled back in, and parked beside us. I was ever so glad to see them, and Pat's warm hug made me feel so comforted. She and I sat one morning a week or so ago and pitted cherries together. I dried mine and she made jam and we shared. I got jam, she got dried cherries.

Three or four days ago she brought over a pail of wonderful cherry muffins. The next day their little white car was gone all day, which was unusual, but I remembered she mentioned they were going to a wedding, so thought maybe they'd decided to simply drive the car, rather than take the big motor home. But then I saw Claude come out early in the morning the next day and drive away alone. Don't know when he got home the night before. I didn't see them around during the day but it was 105 degrees and no one was running up and down the road with gay abandon.

Yesterday evening while I was out in the yard with the cat Pat came around the end of the motor home with her arm heavily bandaged, with all kinds of hardware sticking out of it! She had fallen off the top step of the motor home and landed on her arm, breaking it very badly. She is terribly bruised and swollen. Poor thing!

She reported that the staff of the local Oliver hospital was wonderful. She was transferred to Penticton the morning after her fall, for orthopedic surgery, with the same surgeon who had done Tony's surgery two weeks earlier. I wonder if he realized that he'd repaired bones on next door neighbours within two weeks of each other?

Our other neighbour Dave had surgery on Thursday, and is already home and making the rounds. He was here this morning, checking on Tony. He's a good man, of the sort you can't keep down apparently.

If you are at all superstitious you might consider staying out of the conga line we've formed. Three households in a row, three injuries, three surgeries, in three weeks. Who said 13 was the unlucky number?

Time Flies

We have a new "pet" but he's up for adoption, as we feel we don't have the dedication to care for him. He doesn't eat much, takes little room, doesn't bark and gives you plenty of upper-body exercise. Yes, I have lost the fly-swat.

When I went after said fly with a rolled up paper Zak asked what happened to my Buddhist principles. They are intact. I figure this fly has learned all we can teach him, and vice-versa, and it's time he went on to his next incarnation. Hopefully if he can't manage butterfly or ladybug he'll at least find himself in a dairy barn in Winnipeg or Thunder Bay.

Tony has been home from the local hospital for several days. He was there four (five?) days. The Physiotherapist came by the day before he was scheduled to come home and looked over our truck (high off the ground and accessed with a running-board step) , looked at the beautiful new cedar stairs and landing Ian built while he was here, and looked at our weensy bathroom with it's 14" high threshold. She said we'd never get him in here alone and said they'd bring him home by ambulance. They did, which was much more comfortable for him than the ride home from Penticton in Ian's car.

He's been pretty much immobile since. He has a potty chair in the back, and has busied himself sorting and catching up on paperwork. Zak has been feeding us great meals, mostly grilled, and he's been keeping the laundry done. How cool is that?

I busy myself running for water, water, snacks, this, that and that other thing. This is fine most of the time but I am not a morning person. Like Henry Higgins of My Fair Lady in the morning I want an atmosphere as restful as an undiscovered tomb, and I AIN'T gettin' it!

Until I've had my coffee and my first dose of meds my dragon scales tend to poke out a bit, especially when I've spent the first 45 minutes of my day on potty duty, am contending with a 20 pound cat who is jealous and confused, and am short three hours of sleep. You may read this as "Buddhist gets the grumps". Lesson: Even a good person, taking care of someone they adore, can get grumpy. Don't be so judgmental next time someone is grumpy with me.

But today there was triumph! You think you were happy when little Billy was potty-trained? I am giddy. Tony made two trips to the bathroom in the wheelchair, assisted of course, but still... it's a big step forward. No more potty chair! But enough of that.

On Sunday Zak and I went to Pancho's Country Market, an artfully organized and presented organic farm market up in the hills above town. We bought blueberries and raspberries, some beautiful baby crookneck squash and some divine raspberry vinegar. My neighbour Pat and I sat down one day last week and pitted a bunch of cherries. I dried about five pounds worth. She made jam, and then we shared. I got some jam, and she got half the dried cherries.

Yesterday Zak and I went out to another fruit/vegie stand which was advertising apricots, and bought some, plus fresh corn on the cob, peaches, nectarines and other locally-grown goodies. The peaches were so fantastic that we went back today and bought 10 pounds and I filled the dehydrator this afternoon. They smell divine. Oh, they set me back 40 cents a pound. That's 80 c a kilo for the metrics crowd.

And to fill you in on the neighbours. Emmett and Maud still appear to be childless, but the two couples they pal around with, Burt and Connie, Bob and Jackie, have each brought their youngsters to the feeder this week! They are the cutest little balls of fluff you ever saw! They look just like brown speckled versions of the Easter chicks I used to get every year when I was small. Burt and Connie's three kids appear to be several days older than Bob and Jackie's four teeny babies. They are an inch taller, and quite a bit larger.

It tickles me that the parents are relaxed enough, even with me sitting outside, to let the babies nestle down in the grass and snooze once they have picked up all the seed they can hold. They blend in so well that you could walk right past them and never see them, if they were brave enough to sit still.

That's my week. It's been very warm. Almost 100 degrees the last few days and so far this afternoon our high has been 104.7 F. It hasn't hit the peak heat of the day yet, so we could be in for a good scorching. Salvador got overheated on Thursday night and I took him to the vet on Friday, just to get him checked over. The vet said he's very hairy (Is that supposed to be news to me?) and that he has quite a bit of adipose tissue, which serves as insulation. In other words he's a humongous hairy FAT cat!

Anyone who wants to talk about dieting with his orange Fatness is welcome to try. He takes his claws to me when I say "diet" to him, and cries pitifully if he doesn't get his cookies. It's cute - his fat rolls wobble when he sobs that hard. On the good side he has lost some weight since Christmas, when he weighed in at 23 pounds.

I'm having to water my poor flowers twice a day, and even then they pant like dogs in the hot afternoon sun. I pant just watering them. But they smell divine at sundown. Mmmm.... still living in paradise.

Maybe It's My Cooking?

My buddy SMM, who was my co-conspirator in many a visit to the sushi restaurant Momoyama (Peach Mountain) in Calgary has moved to the BC coast and can get fresh fishies. She recently made a plate of sushi and tortured me by sending photos.

I on the other hand bought a couple of trout for the grill at the local, and they turned out to be long time no sea, or at least no body of water. Whew! Fish fertilizer. We had steak instead. He ate it, and the grilled potatoes and the grilled vegies. Which made me assume that he liked my cooking.

But you know the old song, "How do you keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Pair-reee?" Well, Tony tasted hospital food and must have developed a taste for it, because he's back over there, eating their tapioca pudd and mystery loaf with "gravy".

All joking aside, poor old poop. He put on a brave face and suffered a lot of pain in the days he was home. That darn foot looked almost normal by Saturday night but then began to turn red, the leg got hotter and hotter and he started running a temperature. The foot swelled more and turned fiery red. He needed a doctor but we couldn't have gotten him out of here unless we took a chain saw to the end of the trailer so we called the EMTs. Lovely men. One of them, a big Native fellow, was one of the EMTs who took him to the Penticton hospital.

It took both EMts and Zak (Ian was gone) to get Tony into the ambulance safely and to transport him to our local hospital. We saw the new doctor in town, a lovely sweet and soft-spoken gentleman from England. It must be a bit disconcerting to move to a small community and find that everyone you meet already knows your name, your wife's name, how many children you have, where you went to school, where you lived before and other details which people normally take some time (and acquaintance) to discover. He was good humoured about it, but a bit dismayed to have drawn the short straw and to be working the first Canada Day he'd spent in the country.

At any rate he said Tony had an infection called cellulitis and needed IV antibiotics and a really good "going-over" to make sure nothing else was amiss. So they admitted him and we came home about 1:30 am.

Tony was feeling better this morning. The foot seemed not quite so hot and the red not so volcanic. His bed is by a large window which looks out onto two large trees, some flowers and shrubs and a vast rolling lawn with the hills beyond. Studies show that patients heal faster with a view of nature, so we have every confidence that he will soon be better and home again. But not until he is mobile enough for me to handle alone! I don't know how I would have coped without both Ian and Zak here. They have been wonderful.

This time I make fierce faces and will not let them discharge Tony too quickly. Thankfully he is only four minutes away now, not an hour.

Things I'm Learning

If, as Buddhism teaches, we choose our lives for the lessons we need to learn this has been a very instructive week. I've learned that I am cranky and bad-tempered when I am frightened and tired beyond tired. I don't deal well with the frustration of not being able to do what needs to be done all by myself, and I still think this is paradise.

Tony is home from the hospital after eight days. He had wonderful care, with one exception. It was impossible to impress on the nursing staff and physiotherapists that his muscles are not strong enough to do the acrobatics necessary to handle oneself one-legged on a walking frame or crutches. They couldn't seem to understand that he has very few working muscles in what essentially look like normal limbs. I do intend to talk to the surgeon, and if possible the Internist about this issue. Both were excellent, but they should have instructed the nurses more carefully about Tony's level of disability.

While we were there to defend him they left him alone, but when we were gone they insisted he get up and use the frame to go to the bathroom, which was a 12 - 15 foot walk one way. They also made him sit up in a chair with his leg hanging down, even though it was so swollen it looked as if the skin was going to separate.

Thursday night they thought he'd had a heart attack as he had intense pain in his chest, back and arms, but it was simply that he had strained his muscles using that blasted walking frame. He is now practically immobile, as with his disorder overused muscles grow more and more rigid over a period of several days, then become extremely weak. It may take months for him to recover his normal level of "strength", once he's back on his feet.

He can now only get up onto the commode which sits by his bed with the aid of two helpers (Zak and myself). It is a monumental effort which leaves him in pain, soaked with sweat and exhausted. It also makes his leg and foot swell and grow dark with congested blood. Needless to say he's only doing this when necessary, otherwise we have him using a urinal. By all rights he should be in a Rehab facility where they could deal safely with his muscle weakness, but I doubt that will happen. I'm not sure I'd trust him to someone else at this point anyway.

We have to take him to Penticton on July third to be assessed by the surgeon, and I am not looking forward to the trip already for his sake. But outside the weather is glorious. This is a holiday (Canada Day) and it's hot, sunny and beautiful. Tony is home. He can look out the window at our lovely trees and hillside, watch the clouds flow across the sky. We talk when he is awake and he hums as if nothing on earth were wrong. He has had many lessons in patience, and it seems they have served him well. He's better at patience than I am. It should have been my leg, but then he'd have a very hard time taking care of me.

It's just another day in Paradise. "Enjoy what there is to enjoy, endure what there is to be endured and through it all do not let your spirit be defeated." Nichiren Daishonin

I Married a Colored Man

Tony eats cherries fresh from the tree this morning.

When Tony and I were engaged he had to have his wisdom teeth removed. He has a serious bleeding problem, actually a clotting problem. He doesn't have enough of the sticky little cells called platelets in his blood. Platelets are the bits that glue together at the end of a broken capillary and keep it from spilling any more blood. So when the teeth were pulled he bled and bled and bled and bled. Then he swelled up like a pumpkin head and bled some more.

He also bruised, from his temples to the waistband of his pj's, which is as far as good girls saw of good boys in our distant youth. He could have been bruised to his ankles. When I say bruised, I mean he was (seriously) the color of a ripe eggplant. Finally he started to improve. You know how a bruise turns that sickly green color as it is clearing up? He turned as green as the grass in Yankee Stadium. He looked absolutely terrible.

At this point he met my parents for the first time. They thought he was a Martian, but I explained that no, he was just a Canadian and they all turned that funny color in the spring. Thankfully he had a "serious" disposition, which pleased the parents, who apparently feared I'd taken up with a circus clown. They preferred a serious (though green) Canadian to a practical joker with a spinning bow-tie and trick suspenders.

Once I explained that he was actually just bruised they felt better about his color. But several times in our marriage I have found myself married to a colored man. Usually a piebald, spotted black and blue one. He hit his head at one point when his platelet count was low and his ability to clot almost non-existant. You could see the bruise spreading under the skin. During those frightening years a touch could bruise him. Blood tests required that the arm be packed in ice and elevated afterwards. Blue arms, swollen black hands.

Thankfully now there's medication to take care of his problem. A bit of inhaled steroid goes a long way toward keeping his ability to clot intact. His platelet count will never be more than half of what yours likely is, but it is enough to keep him reasonably intact.

He lost a lot of blood during this surgery. He's a little white under his tan. Except that if you look at the poor leg you think of that kid's song about singing a rainbow...

"Red and yellow and pink and green,
purple and orange and blue.
You can sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow too."

I have a rainbow husband. I married a colored man.

You Can't Unbreak an Egg

We had such a pleasant week - till Thursday night. It was hot, but not oppressively so. Wednesday we'd taken opportunity to use the portable washing machine I bought some time ago to wash the smaller items of clothing, and we went to town to pick up the food dehydrator I'd ordered the week before.

I picked some cherries, pitted and sliced them and dried them overnight. These will be lovely on cereal on a cold January morning. Late Thursday afternoon I decided to dry another couple of pounds of cherries, and Tony helped by spreading them on the dehydrator trays. They have to go skin side down, which is not hard, but is fiddly. While I pitted and sliced, he loaded the trays. For some reason it was "Broadway Tunes" day, so we regaled Salvador with our version of the old Barbra Streisand hit, "Second Hand Rose"....

...even our pee-ah-no in the pahhh-lah
Father bought for ten cents on the dollll-aaahhh...

When the trays were filled Tony said he'd put the top on them and start the dehydrator, which was sitting on the table just outside the door.

I said, "You go out, I'll hand the trays to you,"

"Nah," he answered, "they're light, it'll be ....."

CRASH

And he was lying on the ground outside, trays in every direction.

I said, "Are you alright?"

"Yes," he said, "but I've broken my leg."

And he had. Oh boy. I just froze up. I absolutely froze.

Neighbours ran from every direction. Thank God the guy across from us (Don) is an EMT. He told me to get a blanket, a couple of pillows, and some ice. I just stood there like a lump. I think he said it three times before I was even able to move. By then our neighbour Stacy had run home and gotten a large bag of frozen peas from her freezer which they put that on the leg.

Someone dialed 911 and someone else ran down to the entrance to direct the ambulance. They propped his leg, wrapped him up. He was talking and even joking, but he didn't look good. I just stood there. I couldn't remember where his medical records were, or where his meds list was. I finally got the case he keeps his meds in, took out his meds and put his shoes in it (??) and took that to the hospital. Did I say I was a little shell-shocked?

The ambulance arrived within four minutes, they loaded him onto a clam shell frame, a small amount of screaming involved there. They gave him nitrous oxide before they moved him, which helped ease his pain but it's a bumpy four minute ride.

Once in the local hospital they doped him with morphine, x-rayed him, and realized that this was too complex a break to be fixed in this hospital. Arrangements were made to transfer him to Penticton Hospital, about 45 minutes away, in the morning.

I went home at 1:00 am, had a shower, went to bed, couldn't sleep for worrying about him, so got up and went back to the hospital. They had transfered him to a bed in the ward, and told me to go home and come back at 7:00.

After an entire hour and half of sleep I was up and went back to the hospital. They arrived to move him within about 10 minutes and I followed the ambulance to Penticton.

These hospitals have the most wonderful staff. The doctors are human beings who joke around, speak compassionately, and give the impression that they actually care about their patients. The Orthopedic Surgeon was waiting when we arrived in the ER, and spent a good hour with us. The Internist spent an hour with us at the bedside in the ward, the Anesthetist came by for a good chat. Everyone was extremely supportive and friendly.

It was late in the day (Friday) by the time they had all the decisions made, but they wheeled him away at 6:45 pm and he was in surgery until almost 11:00 pm. They called as soon as he was out of surgery to say he'd come through it fine, and was doing well.

The surgeon showed me the x-rays they took in the OR when we were in visiting today. He said the breaks were even more complicated than they had first believed. He broke his tibia (larger bone in the lower leg) in two places, with one of the breaks greatly displaced, almost came through the skin. It also had a series of spiral fractures running the length of the bone. They inserted a rod down the centre of the bone and put two screws top and bottom. The smaller bone, the fibula, was broken into four pieces, and required plating to repair.

He looked a bit pale today but his pain level was considerably reduced from yesterday. Ian arrived from Calgary late last night and we went to Penticton this morning. Tony was eating lunch when we arrived, so he didn't break his appetite. He was quite tired and drifted off to sleep any time the conversation lagged. We left to go get some needed supplies and let him sleep for an hour.

They were talking about sending him home tomorrow but he couldn't get inside if he came home. He'll be on a walking frame and crutches for weeks, if not months, and there's no way to get him up that step ladder on crutches. Ian will begin building steps and a deck tomorrow. With hand rails.

Poor Tony, but it's his first broken bone, if you don't count a fractured skull. Hopefully he will never do this again!

A Day in Paradise

We keep thinking we died and woke up in paradise. But wait, we still have to do laundry, so that can't be right. If this were paradise our fig leaves would be self-cleaning.

But if it's not paradise it is very close. Right now the cherry trees are heavily laden with deep red, incredibly sweet cherries. It's good that James and Cathy don't come and weigh me every day and charge me by the pound! I pick a bagful, come home, wash them and proceed to eat them.

While I pick cherries I breathe in the scent of the lavender that is blooming so profusely right now. Lavender is my favorite fragrance, delicate, brisk, clean, no heaviness or cloying sweetness.

The last few days have been cool and lovely. We did turn the air conditioner on for about an hour day before yesterday in the late afternoon. It had rained earlier and it was very humid. A few minutes sucking power from the line and our little AC had cooled it down to a very tolerable 80 degrees. We don't really want it any cooler. We are comfortable with 80 - 85. I worked for a lady once who kept her house at 60 degrees. I'd go out into the 100 degree heat and just feel sick.

We went to town yesterday and shopped till we dropped so today we're both a little flat. But, nothing is on fire so there's no rush to do anything. I reorganized that dratted kitchen pantry again. That's an on-going chore. Tony put together the little propane BBQ we bought, so we can grill a steak or a piece of salmon outside on hot days.

Otherwise we are sitting her watching the birds gobble bird seed from the feeder and on the ground below. It's been so much fun to watch the mama and papa sparrows feed their babies and teach them what to eat. One puzzled youngster wasn't quite certain what to do with the unhulled sunflower seed his mama popped into his mouth.

He turned it around and around and around, cocking his head this way and that until he finally determined that he had to get through the hard nasty part to reach the yummy bit inside.

Well, the afternoon is trickling away and I want to go pick some cherries for my afternoon snack, so I am going to post this and go away.