Saturday began with a lovely cool forest walk with Stacy at 7:30. I was home by 8:30 and I immediately got busy fixing a deck chair that broke when Dwight was here. And then I swept the deck and cleaned up the courtyard. After that, I started on the watering of the front beds. I do them in the morning and the backyard beds in the evening and I must do them every day during the hot and eternally sunny weather.
I’m also fertilizing as I water, and when I get tired of watering, I prune and pull weeds. This will be my pattern for the next several days. Watering and otherwise working on the gardens is a pleasure and so the days working until Dianne arrives will ensure I get everything done that I want to do. I haven’t read a page of a book in weeks.
For the first time, I wore my new back brace to see if it helps reduce the pain that I get in my back from working in the gardens. I felt good to put on, and it really helps, but it doesn’t keep me from feeling fried from the constant working in the gardens. However, it’s a tiredness that feels good because it comes from getting work done that has long needed doing. Most of the Boxwood that Dan gave me to transplant has died. I’m going to get rid of the dead bushes today and that will be a big job done.
By 3:00 it was 32° and I was beat. But no spa! I waited until the sun was off it before I got into it. So, my relaxing after a good day’s work was in the house where it was lovely and cool. Looking out at the gardens on so hot a day brought me a great sense of satisfaction and pride because I knew they were all flush with water and a nice refreshing evening was on its way.
I loved every second of yesterday. I thrive in solitude, and nothing is more fun for this old fart than puttering in the garden on a beautiful day. I have a list of things remaining to be done, and I shall see how much I can do.
On my evening walkabout last night, I noticed that my Blueberry bushes are all growing a massive amount of new foliage. It could be due to more light from the felling of trees on Dave’s land, it could be the compost that Bronwyn applied last fall, I could be the fertilizing that I’ve been doing this year, or all these things. I planted them five years ago at least, and they’ve always looked critically ill. But not now.
This year, I’m getting a huge emotional pay-back from the gardens. From the soil up, almost ½ an acre of landscaping where there was nothing. I built a fence around the backyard and started planting on a blanket of topsoil I had trucked in.
I was regularly doing gigs with a storytelling company, having one meal a month in a haut cuisine restaurant, active with my friends and a very, very active walker. And then FND hit, and one day, 17 months after its onset, I saw an ad for this house I’m in online. I immediately sold my condo, bought the house and moved here. October 17, 2017, was my first day here.
My doors windows are open. There are no bugs (yet, the Yellow Jackets come in August), it is silent except for the crowing of a rooster, All I see is trees and the silver roof of Dave’s new yurt looking like a spaceship in the forest. It’s 29°, and the enormous bush of Ocean Spray that grows between my yard and the spaceship, is wafting its sweet, sweet fragrance that smells like an English garden is blowing through the house.
It was an impulse move, coming here. It was a snap decision. Suddenly I knew that it was time to leave the city that I thought I would never ever leave. I had to get out because I was having up to ten seizures every day. And I have built my playground, with hammock, of course, and the hot tub. Conceptually, a hot tub was anathema to me.
Todd, a very fine young man who I adore and is married to Jess, a surrogate daughter, came to help me move in. He said that he’d assemble all the furniture for me and help me unpack boxes and clean the appliances. But first for him, was the hot tub. He cleaned it, filled it (emptying my cistern) and made me a disciple of the church of the bubbling hot tub. I remain a faithful disciple.
And then came Sheba, Fred and Ethel, and paradise.
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