Author: marcia

First pumpkin plant.

First potato plant?

Seeded Nasturtiums along the back cellar wall, the trellis and the bird bath base. Seeded Portulaca in the new garden, but the seeds are so tiny that I’m not holding out much hope.

Wind is fierce today, gusting up to 40 MPH, enough to make driving hazardous and knock over small trees.

At the Cape Cod discount nursery, the word was, “If you’re in the nursery business – get out.”

Planted two Munstead Strain Lavender in the new country garden. Would have loved to have put in more plants, but I’m nervous about heat next week.

Picked up a hose rack for the back yard at Waquoit Feed and Garden and what I hope is a better spray nossle than the Gilmours purchased up to now.

The compost from the Falmouth recycling center had been sitting in the front yard under a bright blue tarp for exactly two weeks.

To say the least, I was way overdue on getting it spread.

By luck, it rained last night, perfect conditions for prepping the soil for the new English country garden.

Here it is, ready to go: compost from Falmouth, more compost from Aubuchon, loam and 2 cubic feet of peat moss. This garden is going to grow with a vengeance once it gets going.

I also finished weeding the grass garden at Edgewater today.

I’m losing track of days, but am pretty sure that I did some yard work yesterday; at least, I have a nasty blister on my left arm, usually a sign that I came into contact with something mean.

I weeded and pruned for sure today, until it was time to go to PT, and I weeded in the grass garden at Edgewater on Sunday.

Tulips have just started in the back, although the grass in the front is already green and healthy, in fact, almost in need of mowing.

I have a hollow leg this week. Tonight I wolfed down half a large pizza. Yesterday I devoured a cottage pie. It is not stress eating, it’s hunger.

Tomorrow, I really have to do something about the compost in the front yard, either move it or spread it.

Beautiful day today, first real shorts weather, and I took full advantage by doing a transfer station run, cutting down a small tree and weeding the grass garden at Edgewater.

I almost lost my gloves over the fence but was able to retrieve them with a rake; good thing, because it looks like we’re getting rain later.

Yesterday, I put some grass seed fertilizer on some of the yellow spots in the back yard at Dixon.

Fed and checked in on Max, who was still hiding upstairs.

Changed sheets here and did some data entry stuff. Fixed the img classes in a bunch of old blog entries, too.

I really like making my own soup.

Last night, I had a yen for corn chowder, and was lucky enough to have frozen corn, light chicken broth, fake cream and the ingredients for a quick mirepoix in the frig. Tastier, less sodium and much less expensive than the soup in the markets.

Washed the pots and pans from last night’s potluck, cooked a chicken breast for Fluffles, put Candy’s wheelbarrow and ladder in the shed, spread compost around the six blueberries and the good butterfly bush, went to Edgewater to feed Max and Swimmy, brought some laundry back, did a transfer station run and picked up a book at the library.

It’s raining, but just a little.

I put down the last two bags of mulch yesterday along the back side of the fence. Pretty ache-y this morning, though, and glad to have the yard work done.

The other day, I got a sympathetic laugh from one of my neighbors, a young professional who did his graduate work in NYC, when I told him that I don’t enjoy the arts on Cape Cod because they are so amateurish. “Yeah,” he said, “they are trying.”

People here are pretentious about clothing and appearance rather than being comfortable with a bit of bohemian funk, and I think that goes hand in hand with their bourgeois outlook on a lot of things.

All the wealth floating around Cape Cod doesn’t necessarily result in a refined sensibility, save possibly the houses and landscaping in some really, REALLY nice neighborhoods.

Is the Cape just a haven for the nouveau riche? Sure seems so at times.

Finished mulching in front of the fence yesterday. Looks like we’re going to have a nice crop of larkspur this year. I’m enjoying the LPJs (Little Purple Jobs) in the vegetable garden.

So, Greg Mortensen has been knocked off his pedestal, and the effectiveness of his mission, to fund the building of schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan through private contributions, is being challenged.

Whether or not he’s a hero with feet of clay, Mortensen still deserves props for getting so many people interested in the transformative possibilities of educating girls and young women in Central Asia.

Even so, I’ve had no illusions about Greg Mortensen since reading his account of how he met and fell in love with his wife, Tara Bishop. She’s small and dark.

Same deal with Nicholas Kristof, whose wife is Asian and in his words, “hot”.

You won’t see either Mortensen or Kristof shilling for schools in places like Appalachia, where many of the children are fair-haired and blue-eyed.

Guess I find male chauvinist, racist piggery more disturbing than bad accounting and poorly executed good intentions.

I’ve been interested in illnesses of the brain since Robert and Emme were diagnosed, but today was the first time that I found a group that could help me understand my own as well as Ron’s brain injuries.

Brain injuries happen for many different reasons besides stroke or TIA – accidents, illnesses like tumors and encephalitis, aneurysms, sports-related injuries.

Most of the people in the room had brain injuries for reasons other than stroke. Even so, I could relate to so many of their experiences.

Examples: the day after attending a conference, or any event that piles on too many stimuli, a couple of the participants said they were exhausted, that it felt like they had the flu.

They said that clutter or noise can be overwhelming, that it takes longer to do anything, even mechanical activities like brushing your teeth, that it requires five times as much effort for an injured brain to move muscles and think through a task.

Someone recommended keeping a list on the wall, or a grid for bill-paying. Others recommended books or DVDs.

A couple of participants felt that HIPPA has created problems for brain-injured people, in that it’s impossible to distribute information on support groups in the community unless specifically asked. Foolish!

One of the difficulties in finding long-term treatment and support is that brain-injured people are stigmatized in our society.

It seems from some of the experiences that even medical professionals have little understanding of how long it takes to recover and the best ways to go about it.

All in all, an enlightening and encouraging two hours. I’m looking forward to the next one and hope Ron can attend as well.