I love and enjoy plants because…
Good morning, August. I can’t believe you’re here.
I Love…
DaVinci Dating
For a couple months now the husband and I have been trying to revive dating as a regular practice. It’s not the easiest thing to do if you’re at the stage of life where staying home is really, well, kind of fun. But we try. The husband compromises and goes to movies with me. I compromise and go to things that catch his attention while watching TV commercials. It was a commercial for the Diiscover DaVinci exhibit that prompted this particular date. “I want to go to that.” was all he had to say to make me rush back to the half price Groupon I had recently deleted and snatch us some tickets. Finding a way to do it at a discount is almost like a message from God that it’s meant to be, in my eyes.
After a couple weeks wondering when to do it, on the last day of the exhibit, we set out in the morning – because it certainly wouldn’t be crowded then, right? No, wrong. There was a good crowd already in the one room auditorium. We got our wrist bands for all day admittance and started with an overview movie that was being shown on the stage. One of the guided tours that was just finishing was louder than the movie narration (did I mention it was a one room exhibit?) so my eyes were on a different script than my ears – but it was all about DaVinci, so who cares?Read More »
It’s A Jungle…
With all the rain we have been getting, the oneacrewoods is turning into a oneacrejungle faster than I can tame it. Letting it go too far is a mistake that take twice as much work to correct. I broke down and got Joe to come help me today and we began cutting things back. You people who live in other parts of the world have no idea what I’m talking about. The vegetation that we remove gets hauled back to a corner of the yard where I hope it will eventually break down and disappear but right now it is a giant pile higher than my head.
I was working in one of my pineapple plots which had become a grass plot and suddenly I heard a curious squeaking noise. So strange, it seemed to be coming from under my feet and I finally located it. Two small critters about four inches long with big ears were panicking in the dirt where I had just pulled up a big grass plant.. They could barely move and were entirely at my mercy. I called Joe over to look. We decided they were rabbits. I’m not sure if they were just hidden in the grass or in a shallow burrow but I had evidently taken away their cover. Joe kind of camouflaged their little depression in the soil with some grass plants and we hoped Mama rabbit would come and fetch them to another home.
An hour or so later I was talking to Joe and he said ” di you see billow ge rabbage?” I am often clueless as to what he’s saying due to his unusual English dialect and rely more on gestures and pointing and good guesses when conversing with him. He pointed to the pineapple patch and repeated the cryptic message. I pondered and came up with “rabbits?” “Yes, big billow take them rabbages.” And since he was now pointing up in a tree I’m assuming he actually saw a hawk get the baby rabbits. Like I said, it’s a jungle out there and everybody has to eat. But I’m sad because they were so cute and had such a short life.
I raise lots of pineapples in the yard and can’t really eat them all when so many are ripe at once. The squirrels and rabbits help me out and I guess I don’t mind as long as they leave a few for me. But something I don’t want them to have is this nice bunch of bananas that is nearly the right size to come ripe. It’s only a few inches off the ground and I don’t know how to protect it. I’m glad I have a picture of the bananas, in case that is all I get. Because it is a jungle, and we all have to eat.
A Small Gift
It’s Monday morning. I’m dressed and sitting at my desk thinking about the day ahead. Last week I repotted a houseplant and brought it to live on my desk in front of the glass doors where it would get a lot of southern exposure. I noticed a large drop of water at the tip of a leaf. And then I saw that every leaf that was turned in the same orientation had a large crystal clear drop of water – the whole plant was decorated at the tips of these leaves only. The rest of the plant was dry. Such a beautiful thing… just sayin’.
Not Easy Being a Horse
They really are beautiful animals, horses. When I think about it very long, it starts seeming strange to me what an network of industries has been built up around this one animal. Even though they are not used for work in average situations anymore, are not a common means of serious transportation, they are large, eat a lot and require a good amount of care – still people are so enamored with horses, especially women. You see horses standing peacefully in a field, or yard or stall and you naturally think “people ride those horses”. No they don’t, not necessarily.
I spent three days with Doc Julia last week. She hurt her back and needed a lackey to help lug her equipment around. I love watching her work and was glad I had the time to go. It was three days of meeting more horses than people. Horses with infected ears, horses with kick wounds, horses with bad skin and sunburn, horses with worms, horses, horses, horses… It seems being a horse in today’s world, especially in Florida, has a lot of hazards.
First of all, if you’re a horse, you had better belong to someone with a little extra cash because you eat like a horse. There is a good reason for that common saying. Horses eat continuously (except when sleeping). They are grazing animals and are most healthy when they can have a little bit of hay or grass going through their system all the time. My daughter’s horses live in a big pasture which appears to be green with some kind of plant but the reality is that the good grass is pretty scarce. Horses don’t like to eat most weeds. (They only like to eat the ones that aren’t good for them – that’s how smart they are.) Bales of hay cost from $7 -$15 and you get what you pay for in quality. And most horses down here also need to be fed some kind of pelletized feed, or oats – also costly in the amounts needed. There is also the supplement market which rivals the human supplement market in competitive fury and complexity. $$$$$
All this eating does amazing things to a horse’s teeth. They wear down where they rub against each other. If their bite isn’t perfectly balanced (and most of them aren’t) they get high places, points, and hooks where there is no wear. It can get difficult and painful to eat if these areas aren’t filed down and smoothed. Enter horse dentistry. $$$$ In the three days I spent with Doc Julia we did eight dentals. Think about your own experience with the dentist. Now try to imagine this happening to a huge, clueless animal who doesn’t like it any more than you do. Yeah, right.
Horses that eat the wrong thing or not enough of the right thing get sick. They get ulcers, diarrhea, constipation, stomach ache and bowel obstruction. Again, if you are a horse you had better have an owner who is willing to call the doctor for a house call because you could die quite suddenly in great pain and agony if you don’t.
If you are a horse, you are on the lookout for anything that could be preying upon you. If you get scared, you move fast to get away. You run into barbed wire fences and tear up your skin, you step in holes and break bones. You can hurt yourself in your own stall. Your life depends on being able to stand on your feet but your hooves are subject to all kinds of conditions that could disable you. You founder, you get eye infections, you get rain rot on your skin. You are a horse and you had better have an owner who loves you.
All this brings us back to the peaceful scene in the pasture – horses grazing on green grass, tails swishing, manes moving with the breeze. Many of these horses can no longer be ridden because of age or infirmity. They are there because someone likes to look at them, pet them and spend money on them. They are there because someone has memories of their better days and loves to see them happy and content. I’m just sayin’, they are the lucky ones.
Resurrection fern in the morning light
Where’s the Lid?
It’s as if someone left the lid off the crazy bottle lately and little demons are spilling out all over. Evidently I completely missed a life or death battle next door last night. True, the person who related the story to me is a bit given to drama – if he was really being chased around the yard by an angry woman with a shovel, would I not have seen that? Sigh. We have two adjoining houses in the oneacrewoods. We’ve rented out the second house ever since my parents stopped coming down in the winter. I would say that probably 75% of the renters have been people we enjoyed having next door. The other 25% have given us some bizarre stories to tell. I have come to understand that this is all part of being a landlord and no matter how careful one tries to be, situations change, things happen. The ideal appearing applicant is still a human being with life problems and things can go crazy down the road. I wonder if the message I see in all the recent events is that it’s time to make life a little less complicated. Simplification can be a beautiful, freeing thing and I might be ready for some of that. What am I going to want to put up with in five years? ten years? or, for instance, when I’m 90? This week I went to visit the 90 year old lady, living by herself, who needed some help dealing with her security company (read about it here) . We were able to solve that problem without too much trouble, but I became aware of other problems that come with age and limited mobility. After we cleared a place off at the table where months of mail was stacked, our conversation turned to how she hadn’t eaten much that day and wished she had a complete food for herself like she did for her dog. Some sort of pelletized people food would be ideal. She still drives her truck to the store for milk but she admitted that it was getting a little scary. And yet she hesitated at my offer of help. Her mind knows she is not taking good care of herself but her body makes it hard for her to do any better. We are all getting older and we need to watch out for each other and help each other when we can. I’m just saying, who do you know who needs some looking after? Food for thought.
I Would Like to Say but I Can’t
I can hardly talk. I’ve had this predisposition for laryngitis since I was a teen but I’ve been so healthy the last few years I had almost forgotten what it was like. When it happens I know I’m going to attempt to say something but I don’t know if I’ll be able to make a noise or not, and if I do it will probably not be audible as speech. Then I’ll have to push myself to talk louder and my throat will tighten and actually begin to hurt. The first cough will come, very dry and bark like. It won’t satisfy the dryness, the itch, the involuntary spasms in my larynx until I cough again. And the more I try to stifle it the worse it becomes until tears are streaming from my eyes and I’m in a coughing free for all.
Where do I not want to be when all this takes place? Several places. My worst memory of it was in a plane over the north pole during a 16 hour flight from Cambodia to Atlanta. I was trapped in my window seat by two other people, and I don’t know where I would have gone even if I could have gotten out. Another inconvenient place is church, on stage, playing the piano. Not good. And then there was today, on the quiet, serene orthopedic floor of the hospital. I had been talking too much and it triggered an episode that I thought would not end well. Fortunately I ran into a sympathetic nurse who not only brought me water, but cough drops as well. Coughing like that makes one feel like a major source of the plague. Maybe I was.
I was visiting my client/friend, well, back up a little.
Last Monday I got a text in the evening from my client who is mostly paralyzed, having a C-5 spinal injury. She does drive a specially equipped van and had been out doing errands that day. It simply read “I almost got killed today on Manatee Ave.” With an opener like that, I thought surely she would tell me more but no.
I talked with her again a day or so later and learned that her electric wheel chair had gone off the sidewalk, over a four inch curb and nearly dumped her in the street. She had been saved by her seat belt and two young men who pulled her back into the chair and the chair back onto the sidewalk. Other than losing her lunch during the panic she didn’t think she was injured. But over the next couple of days there was evidence of pain, then swelling in her leg and finally an x-ray that showed a broken femur. I knew nothing about this last finding until last night when I got an email from a friend with a partial name of a hospital and a room number. It was late. I went to bed.
This morning I got up early, before testing my voice, and scurried over to the hospital. Her room number was 932 but, funny thing, there was no 932 in that hospital, and no one registered by her name. And it took a lot of vocal energy to find this stuff out, believe me. So I sat in my car and thought of another hospital where she could have gone. I experienced the agonizing frustration of talking on the phone, having no voice. It’s not like I could use body language or charades or pencil and paper. She wasn’t at that hospital either. I went home and sent out several queries by text and waited for answers.
I did finally find her in the next town south and made it down there by mid morning. Other than the above mentioned coughing fit, the visit went well and I was glad I went. This is why. She is scheduled for surgery and when going to surgery, jewelry is removed if possible. My client had a ring that no one had been able to remove from her finger. It was valuable and she was not wanting to have it cut off. I knew a nifty trick to remove a tight ring that I had learned years before from a youtube video. I was dying to use it on this perfect occasion. Everybody should know this method because it really works great and is so easy. You can use thin elastic, ribbon, even dental floss. I used crochet thread because I happened to have it with me. So, I’m going to end with this and you should watch it because you never know when you might be someone’s answer to prayer.
The Way Things Are
I have no control, not really. I may make appointments and think I know where I’m going to be, but it’s never really the case. It’s such a true saying “wherever I go, there I am” and that’s about all I can count on. It’s okay. It relieves me of a lot of responsibility. I didn’t even get upset last night when the post I’d spent a couple hours thinking through and writing down disappeared when I inadvertently moved my hand in front of the touch screen. I guess WordPress doesn’t have automatic update/save. That’s the way things are.
Today I am put in charge of a situation to solve for someone else, if I can. I have total compassion for people who by some strength of body and mind have managed to live to be old, like over 90, and still are taking care of themselves. But things get difficult and maybe it’s hard to remember how you used to take care of difficulties with contracts and bills and harassing phone calls. So you are happy to let someone help you. I was volunteered for this job.
My friend C. who is younger, only a year or so past 80, has taken to looking after a neighbor, the above mentioned person. A while back she fell in the driveway on her way to the mailbox and couldn’t get up. Someone noticed and came to her aid. Later when C. was with her he suggested she get some kind of device she could use to summon help. She had one – it was in the house, when she was in the driveway. He found out she was a bit disturbed with a bill she had gotten from the security company. She had an experience with a rather sharp tongued customer service rep when she called to ask about it. She didn’t understand and C. couldn’t explain it to her but he told her Shirley would take care of it, not to worry. Right.
After half a dozen calls I finally get to someone who might have info on this account and, as usual, I have to have a password or they won’t address the issue with me. That’s the way things are. What are the chances our 90 year old friend will remember a password she chose three months ago? I don’t remember passwords I chose last week.
It’s a strange day outside. It is bright and sunny except for the three or four times (about every hour) when a cloud has coasted overhead and dumped torrential rain for 10 minutes or so. We are in Florida and that also is just the way things are.
Another Interesting Day
It’s July already and I’m having another interesting day. Thankfully, this one had nothing to do with me visiting a doctor’s office or my health, but it does have a medical component to it. Remember hearing about the old days when doctors made house calls? Well, guess what? My daughter, the veterinarian, still does (read about her here). She traveled 275 miles to see this client.
We had a restful Fourth of July weekend visiting Doctor Julia ( ) in Jacksonville at her home. Then yesterday the Doc, the grand dog Tess, the husband and I all traveled south to our home. Julia still has lots of friends here and a couple of them breed Dalmatians – the dogs with all the spots. There was a litter of puppies due to go to their new homes this week and they needed their health certificates. I always love watching the Doc work so I volunteered to go along and help. I’m a nurse and a good animal holder.
It was kind of like being at try-outs for a remake of “101 Dalmatians”. There were 10 of the cutest, roly, poly, wiggly pups waiting to be brought out, one by one, and checked out from head to toe. And the process is not all that different from what I’ve recently been through, although I wasn’t checked for worms (yet). Listen to heart and lungs, check ears and mouth, temp, stool sample, vaccines and de-wormer, toenail clip… an assembly line that amounted to a good morning’s work.
I Just Have to Say... 