Life and the other

 If you have been blogging for a long time, you have made friends who mean as much to you as people you know in "real life". And the long time of blogging means that we have all gotten older, with the sad facts that may go along with it. Sickness. Death. 

Some of my beloved blogging friends have lost their husbands  And today I read that a woman I have been in touch with for a long time died. Her daughter posted on her blog. 

I cried as if I had known her in my everyday life, because of course I did. It is made even harder because I have been away so much in the past year. If she was sick, I didn't even know. I've emailed her daughter.

I know a lot of you have been through this, too. The blogging world is slower, quieter than what came after it. That is why I love it and continue on. It lifts me up, teaches me, offers friendships, and sometimes brings sadness.

Melody Gardot & Sting - Little Something (The One Show)

I just heard this today on a jazz radio station, and I love it. I've been a fan of Melody Gardot for a long time, and Sting is always great. Their voices go perfectly together, I think. Also, it is a tune I can't stop humming.

Followup

This is a followup to my January 1 post. In March, Tom had two seizures at home, and one at the local hospital after the ambulance brought him there. He later went down to the hospital I mentioned in the other post. He stayed only a day, and is now on an anti-seizure medicine. So far, it has worked. And he sleeps better than he has in twenty years. 

This has been harder to deal with than the post-concussion because he cannot drive. He has a followup zoom appointment with the neurologist in October and he is hoping he will be able to drive again. Was the concussion caused by a seizure, or did the concussion bring on seizures? Or are they unrelated? There has been no real answer. We just have to accept what is. It is mostly okay. He tires easily, and must rest during the day. He does have some memory lapses but nothing really important. He has stuck to the low saturated fat regime, and though he misses some things, he is mostly okay.

I am really going to try and write more, and read your blogs which I have missed so much.

Last week's flowers, and a surprise visitor

 I've meant to post these pictures for nearly a week! The tulips are the most beautiful I've ever seen. I told the woman who grows them that the first week's were elegant, and the second week's were like a party! Such colors, and all mixed together. You'll also see a couple of poppies. I so love them even if they are often gone in a day or two.

I usually keep them in a big vase for a day or two and then break down the bouquet into little containers.

And the surprise visitor ...

After his snack of sunflower seeds, he headed over to the suet feeders and pulled them right off the poles and carried them off. 

Spring has sprung

It is in the mid-fifties which is not warm, and there isn’t sunshine every day, but I just love this time of year. The air is full of birds singing away - white throated sparrow, woodcock, thrush, robin, finches both purple (which are really red - why are they called that?) and gold, mourning dove, chickadee, nuthatch, junco, crow, and still a few turkeys, though the mating season has wound down and the ladies are in the woods on their nests. I heard a red-winged blackbird today which I haven’t heard here for years. And the peepers and woodfrogs! It is just glorious. Every single day there is something new popping out of the ground or flowering. The pictures become a bit clearer if you click on them. The forsythia makes me feel like I am immersed in yellow.

And the first CSA bouquet of the year. These are La Belle Epoque tulips, which the grower adores! And I do, too.

Today's picture - Mayflowers

How do these mayflowers know it is the first of May??

Ah, spring!

 We had an all day snow yesterday, and the weather folks say we got 22 inches. Best snow of the winter, and it isn't even winter anymore! I shoveled for a couple hours, and then Margaret and Hazel walked up while Matthew rode the four wheeler and plowed out the parking area, and a path for the oil delivery tomorrow. 

I don't think there is any day in a year that is so beautiful as this. Bright white snow, blue blue sky, and warm sun that is melting the snow. Perfect.

Advice from a gardener 120 years ago

 My local library recently purchased a book published in 1904, written by a woman about the garden at her summer home in my town. 

Gardening is completely new to her, and she freely admits the mistakes she makes as well as delights in the successes. 

I loved the following which I think is a lesson we all must learn over and over again. At least this is my experience.

I have found it advisable, in buying plants from a florist, to buy from one whose nursery is either near by, or, at least, located where the conditions are similar to the climate. For they are more likely to fulfil the promises of the catalogue if they are raised in the same kind of climate as the one in which they will be expected to grow.

I have had gardens for a long time, and I still get wooed by a plant in a catalogue which grows perfectly the first year, or sometimes even the second, but then gives up the ghost!

The loss of another young man

 At my age, one might expect to go to funerals. In New Tricks, Jack Halford played by the excellent James Bolam says that he goes to a funeral every couple of weeks. Well, very, very sadly the last five funerals or Celebrations of Life Tom and I have been to have been young men. I’ve written about two of them here and here. In between them there were two others, one a bit older than Margaret, and the other in Michael's class, and then last month was the fifth. This young man was a year, lacking two days, older than my daughter Margaret. He died on the local mountain he loved, doing what he loved to do, snowboarding. 

There were hundreds of people there. The place was up a hill, and we were early enough to park in one of the parking lots. When we came out, there were cars almost down to the main road. He was much loved in the community. I didn’t know him personally, but I know his mother, and his sister is one of Margaret’s best friends, and Tom taught him in school. There is something about the small Middle and Senior High School which all the young men, but one, attended that is very, very special. The kids were close, and they remain close. And many, many of them stay in the area. They love this place with the same passion that we have. Some move further away, but they they come back home and get together with all the friends they’ve known most of their lives. It is an amazing school and area that brings them all together for a lifetime. 

And their parents were there, most of them old hippies like Tom and I. There were no women with dyed hair or facelifts. There was gray hair, and there were wrinkles, and there were a few with canes or walkers. Their “kids” are in their forties now and the parents in their sixties and seventies. Even if we don’t know everyone personally, we still “know” each other. We spent most of our time with the mother of a woman whose daughter was in Margaret’s class, and whose own son died almost a decade ago at whose Celebration of Life all of us were back then. 

The man who died was an early skateboarder when that sport was looked down on by much of society. There is a skateboarding park in town, but there hasn’t been enough money to really make something of it. His sister-in-law had the idea to give contributions in his name to the park, and would you believe that $52,000 dollars has been given thus far. It just makes me cry, and makes me feel so proud of this wonderful community.

Today's poem by Roger McGough

Let Me Die A Youngman's Death

Let me die a youngman's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
and give me a short back and insides

Or when I'm 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a youngman's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death

Roger McGough 

and I am happy to say that he is still alive!

I first put up a Roger McGough poem ten years ago. Here is my post from then. You'll see that it was in this very month! I love things like that. I am watching the same series ten years to the month from when I first watched it, and I am watching it on Acorn TV as I was then. 

Anyhow, I think this is quite a wonderful poem. In the show a young boy recited part of it. He says about Mcgough, "He's a Scouser [from Liverpool] but he writes good poems." The boy lives in the North East of England.

When I first read the title I thought it meant he wanted to die young, but no. His website is here, and so worth reading.

I can't seem to find any definition of his use of "tumour". I thought it must be a misprint but I've found it the same word on many poetry sites. Maybe someone who is from England could explain? 

Please read Michelle Ann's comment!

Today's picture - Lucy in the sunshine

 

Grace Kelly - Trying To Figure It Out

I so love this.

Bank of Dave | Official Trailer HD

I'm here with a movie recommendation. It is on Netflix in the US, but I would think it would be on Netflix in England also as it is an English movie, set in Burnley. I read that part of it was filmed there but it was mostly Bradford, Leeds, Wakefield, and London. I began watching knowing absolutely nothing about it. If you like to do that, you can skip the trailer! Anyhow, it is a wonderful movie.

Today's pictures - sunshine

After about nine days of dark, cloudy weather we have sun today. The blog header picture was taken yesterday, and here is the same view today.

 And if you look closely, you may be able to see the smoke coming out of the chimney, against the blue, blue sky.

Book List 2024

January - 5

1. The Murder at the Vicarage - book 1 in the Miss Marple series

by Agatha Christie

mystery 1930

Kindle

2. The Body in the Library - book 2 in the Miss Marple series

by Agatha Christie

mystery 1942

Kindle

3. Hilda and the Troll - book 1 in the Hildafolk series

by Luke Pearson

children's graphic novel 2010

print

library book

4. We Don't Know Ourselves

A Personal History of Modern Ireland

by Fintan O'Toole

nonfiction 2021

print

5. Trouble in Triplicate - book 14 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1949

Kindle

February - 2

6. The Second Confession - book 15 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1949

Kindle

7. Felsengarten

Our Mountain Garden

by Mrs. Theodore Thomas (Rose Fay)

nonfiction 1904

print

library book

March - 3

8. Three Doors To Death - book 16 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1950

Kindle

9. Dead Presidents

 by Brady Carlson

nonfiction 2016

print

10. In The Best of Families - book 17 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1950

Kindle

April - 2

11.  Spring Rain - book 3 in the Gardener's Chronicle trilogy

by Marc Hamer

nonfiction 2023

print

12. Curtains For Three - book 18 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1950

Kindle

May - 2

13. Asleep 

The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains One Of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries

by Molly Caldwell Crosby

nonfiction 2010

print

14. Murder by the Book - book 19 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1951

Kindle

June - 3

15. Mr Rosenblum's List 

Or Friendly Guidance For The Aspiring Englishman

by Natasha Solomons

fiction 2010

print

16. American Bloomsbury

by Susan Cheever

nonfiction 2006

reread

print

17. Triple Jeopardy - book 20 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1952

Kindle

July -

18. In My Time Of Dying

How I Came Face-To-Face With The Idea Of An Afterlife

by Sebastian Junger

nonfiction 2024

print

library book

19. Corps of Granite

Glimpses of New Hampshire's CCC Camps

by Robert W Averill

and Kris Pastoriza

nonfiction 2024

print

library book

20. Prisoner's Base - book 21 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1952

Kindle

21. The Golden Spiders - book 22 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1953

Kindle

And a Happy New Year!

 I've always loved John and Yoko's Christmas song, and particularly these lyrics:

"And a happy New Year. Let's hope it's a good one, without any fear."

Why "fear"? Just because it rhymes with year? I don't think so. Artists are geniuses at coming up with just the right words. There is so much fear everywhere. Wars, climate, politics, and more personal fears about one's life.  

We have had some months of fears. Tom had a fall and had to go down to the hospital where Hazel was born ten years ago. They needed to check him out because of concussion and brain bleed (aren't those awful words). This happened on August 30th. He came home on September 1st. While he was there, it was discovered that he has a heart ailment called "a-fib" and then later found out he has high cholesterol. One wouldn't expect a vegetarian of 52 years to have such a thing, but the past few years he has eaten a lot of fat - cheese and butter particularly. Probably this is stress-related from issues dealing with his mother's old age. 

I went online and found out how many grams of saturated fat he should have in a day. It was miles less than he had been eating. He began mindfully living by those grams, and has lost a lot of weight. We won't know for a while if it has done good with the cholesterol numbers. Apparently there are some kinds which are genetic, rather than caused by diet. 

He had a stress test for the a-fib and found that his arteries are not clogged. That is such a relief. He only has to take an aspirin a day to deal with it. The cholesterol medicine comes with warnings for most everything on earth, but I am ignoring them hoping the eating less fat will make a difference. 

He definitely has post-concussion stuff. The problem is that we think he had three before this, but he was never unconscious as he was in August, and we never thought much about them. Now, knowing what we know, there were side effects. He is working hard to rest more, and walk, do qigong, and meditate each day. Slow and steady wins the race, we hope. 

All this is why I have written even less lately than before. The days have been sometimes exhausting. 

I am really going to try to write more in 2024. I have continued to read your blogs, though not often commenting. I want to be a blogger again.