Allegri Miserere, Pie and Peace

This is just before it goes into the oven. Look at all that Garlic!

This is a favourite dish: It’s a pie of caramelized Garlic, Spinach and White Cheddar cheese. This tart is one reason I grow so much Garlic. Each tart contains three entire heads of Garlic.

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Finally, we had a light shower of rain. We haven’t had any real rain for months. Our streams are dry, and my water collectors are empty. We had snow in mid-February and virtually no precipitation since. It’s weird. I hope we get another shower or rain today for the sake of the gardens.

I bought a choral CD and as soon as I heard Allegri Miserere, I fell deeply in love with it. I’ve been playing it every day as I drive anywhere. Plus, I listen to it often at home. I can’t get enough of it, so I Googled it and was amazed by it’s tory! Do you know its history?

It was written by Gregorio Allegri, probably in the 1630s according to Wikipedia, for the exclusive use of the Vatican which prohibited its transcription. However, when fourteen-year old Mozart heard it in Rome, he went home and wrote down its score. He returned to check on the accuracy of his transcription and likely made some adjustments.

Imagine, at fourteen, being able to transcribe something so complex, but this is a man who composed his Minuet and Trio in G major at age five!

(By the way, that's a young boy hitting the high Cs!)

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I’m at peace with my condition again. I sure lost it there for a while when things got so much worse. I got very scared about my future; I feared I might continue to get worse and eventually be permanently and totally mute and that made me feel depressed. Dr. Shoja’s email made me feel so much better by calling my decline a flare up.

Yesterday, all my friends with whom I Zoomed were accepting and compassionate. Although my speech was dreadful and laboured, and I had a seizure, I managed to get words out and that is enough. 

Hoping for recovery is dangerous, it seems to me. It can lead to disappointment. As long as I can say words, I’m at peace with my condition.

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Today’s agenda is light. I plan to make more Asparagus soup, eat Garlic tart, read some and walk Her Highness. Sadly, I see signs that the sky will clear, and we’ll get no more light rain. The next few days are likely to be sunny again, which is nice in a way, but we need real rain.

Relief!

I love so many things in this video: I love how tidy she is, her patience and her artistry, the grace in her movements and the settings. 

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The sky cleared yesterday in the afternoon and the temperature was 15°! It was the nicest weather yet this year. I haven’t the skill to relay the euphoria I felt about being so warm outdoors. But I did no work. I took Sheba for a nice long walk, came home and got into the spa.

I freaked out yesterday. It was a rough, rough day—lots of seizures and it was almost impossible to Zoom with friends my speech was almost non-existent. So, in a panic, I wrote to Dr. Shoja thinking that she’d get the email on Tuesday after the long weekend. (I waited until after 5:00 to send it.) But I got a response this morning.

She called what I’m experiencing a “flare up,” and that term brought me immediate relief. Phew! Now I’m confident I’ll get stronger again and that’s clearly what I wanted to hear because I feel so much more optimistic and calm now. I must get on with living.

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I went on the dog walk this morning and noticed some improvement in my speech. I think that being told its just a flare up has brought so much relief that I’m already better. 

After the walk, I went into the village to get supplies with which to make a Garlic and cheddar tart. I’ve been making lovely things to eat—Asparagus soup, Prawn risotto—to offset the depressive effect on my spirit of my flare-up. Then I came home to Zoom with theatre friends and again sensed modest improvement in my speech—modest, yes, but improvement!

Now I’m going to do some yard work—not a lot, but it’s so lovely outside, I want to be out there and making Pinecone Park tidier and more beautiful.

Dreaming

Today is cloudy. It’s uninspiring. I am content to remain indoors today to give my body some healing time. My hips hurt from all the bending over of the past three days, and my wrist hurts from the repetitive motion of all the raking. My plan is to read and maybe tidy up my studio.

The weather forecast is wonderfully promising, however, come Sunday. I’ll be outside a lot again soon to get more of the yard work done; Pinecone Park is gunna shine! But oh my gosh, one old man versus half an acre is a daunting task. 

I worked like mad, starting at 10:00 am yesterday, raking, picking up dog poop, cutting back invasive vines, scooping up all I’d raked into the wheelbarrow and then burning it in the incinerator. I went back and forth between feeling blessed to have things to do and wishing I could just lie on one of my lounge chairs in the sunshine. But there’s at least a week’s work ahead.

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One very lovely new aspect of life here at Pinecone Park, is that I have lots of Daffodils blooming and several cut ones in my house, giving off their particularly evocative Spring fragrance. Normally, the Deer eat all the blooms and the Cats overturn every flower container and they maul the flowers, but not this year. Miracles happen!

In this weather that lures me outdoors, I’ve several more days of work on the yard to do. Then, once the yard it done, I’ll be on the ladder cleaning my roofs with the new extension rake I bought. If I don’t remove the acidic forest fall from the roof, it will corrode the metal. And, I’ve windows to clean, inside and out. This morning, I cleaned both fireplaces.

I suspect I’ll have everything done by the end of April, and since I get my vaccine on the 11^th, I’ll also be able to have an adventure at the end of the month. I am keen to go somewhere in the van with Sheba and try sleeping in it; I’ll likely go to Vancouver or Victoria.

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I loved reading this morning that the Archbishop of Canterbury basically outed Megan Markle as a liar. She told Oprah Winfrey that she and Harry were secretly and privately married by him prior to the public wedding and he called that out as a lie. I can’t stand the woman. Poor Harry!

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Last night I had a pretty great dream. I was in an art gallery where a respected artist was working as though it was his studio. He wasn’t hanging a show. There was paint and canvas everywhere. And my spiritual twin, Dwight, was in it, and so was Sheba. I can’t recall ever dreaming about Sheba before, and it was wonderful to have her running around with me as I roamed through the artist’s space.

And then, suddenly the artist’s assistant and the artist stopped working for a break and were talking and I overheard the assistant telling his boss that he had to use his mind to fight his demons and that was another first. I speak fluently in my dreams. There’s never been a sense of my having any mental health concerns until last night, and I was pleased by the positive nature of the reference.