Baby Steps

Photo by Maxime Horlaville on Unsplash

I am two weeks home from the hospital today, almost three weeks post-hospitalization. My recovery has been...

Slow.

Steady, but slow. 

We all know the phrase "baby steps." We tell it to a friend when they jump into a new project and get overwhelmed at all there is to learn and do.

"Baby steps," we remind them lest they get discouraged. "Take baby steps." 

I am reminding myself that when I get discouraged about my post-hospitalization recovery.

"Baby steps, April. Baby steps."

Yeah, I'm taking baby steps. Mouse baby steps.

We (the medical "we" and Warren and I) are still trying to sort out what happened (a pancreatic bleed of some sort) and, more important, why. (Who knows?) I have an appointment Monday morning with my brilliant surgeon, Dr. Goslin, who followed me through my BIG medical crisis in 2023, who removed my gallbladder in 2024, and who, along with his associates, followed me through this most recent adventure. I am interested to hear his thoughts on what possibly led to the bleed, where he thinks I am now, and what the future might look like. 

I realize that last thread—what the future might look like—may be a lost cause. "Well, that's all. The crystal has gone dark." (Professor Marvel to Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz, 1939.) 

As for me, I am here. Changed (again), but here. The horrific heat dome seems to have broken. (I. Hate. Heat.) I was out at 6:00 a.m. today watering the gardens, listening to the earliest birds of the day. I penned this post at 8:00 a.m., sitting outside on our front porch, watching wisps of clouds scud by overhead. It is mid-morning now as I type and the day is still blissfully cool.

Warren and I have been ending our evenings sitting outside on our front porch in the late evening, after the sun is off the day and the temperatures cooled a little, watching the firefly show in our front yard. It is a wonderful way to pull the day to a close with each other without electronics, without other tasks demanding attention. Just flickering bits of light: on, off, on, on, off.

I am grateful. Grateful for life, grateful for Warren, grateful for those bits of light. 

This Year's Gardens: Chaper 6

With my hospitalization last week, I lost some time in the gardens. I am just now catching up, albeit slowly. Warren tended to things while I was unavailable, watering some, weeding more. I spent most of this week regaining lost ground, but yesterday morning I finally took a few tentative steps, literally and figuratively, into our back and looked at the kitchen garden. This morning, I did even more, visiting the Hej garden, doing some weeding in the behind-the-house flower bed, watering all of the gardens. 

I am slow; it is wonderful.

In the Hej garden, the potatoes are flourishing. Several zucchini are making their presence known, as are a few cucumbers. The three red cabbages are just starting to think about forming heads. (Sorry, no photos; it was early and I had no pocket for a phone when I was out watering.)

Earlier this week, while I was still housebound for all practical purposes, Warren appeared in the front hallway and beckoned to me with his finger. "Come look." 

Tomatoes! 

Then, maybe that day, maybe the next, while I was sitting out on the back deck, he called over to me: "You have peppers!"

Peppers! 

Ohio, like many states around us, is predicted to be under a strong heat dome over the next few days, starting today and extending into the week. High heat, oppressive heat. No breaks. The lettuce beds have flourished this year, the best they have been ever, but even if they were shaded (and they are not), they are likely goners. The lettuces hate the heat. So this morning I went out and cut a lot of leaves to get a precious salad or two. I told my dear neighbor Mary to do the same, and she grabbed some for her household too. We talked on the back deck a little bit later and I told her to pick more if (a big "if") the beds hold up. I doubt they will, but at least our two homes will enjoy some salad before the heat wipes it out.

I even managed to grab what are probably the last of the green onions and bring them in for cooking and salads. Not bad for basically giveaway prices! 

For the next several days, assuming the forecast is even close to accurate, my gardening will be pretty much limited to early morning watering. I do not do well in heat even when I am in good shape, and I have no illusions about what kind of shape I am in right now. The gardens will do their thing and grow, especially the peppers, which thrive in hotter weather. 

Life will roll on, despite the heat. 

And so will we. 

Quiet

It is a little after 5 a.m. and I am sitting in our living room, penning these words. My body is still on "hospital time," and I have been awake since about 4 a.m., which is when the nurses came through to get the morning's blood draws. After listening to the soft sounds for an hour or so while Warren slept beside me, I eased out of bed just a few minute ago, got dressed, and came on downstairs.

We had a storm tear through briefly last night, maybe around 8:00. The day had been hot and humid and heavy. Warren had mowed the lawn earlier and was in his shop. I could see the trees in the backyard pitch and toss a little, but nothing too dramatic. Then with a fierce rush, the sky blackened, the wind escalated, and the storm was on. It pounded for maybe ten or so minutes: wind and more wind, rain, lightning, thunder, more rain. 

Compared to what millions in other parts of this country have been going through, this was not that big a deal. We did not lose power. We were not under a flood warning. Tornado sirens did not go off. All the same, it was enough to remind me yet again how powerful nature is.

Afterwards, Warren and I stepped out on our deck. Knowing we might get a storm, he had moved decorative planters to lower levels as a precaution. It made no difference. They still turned over.

The fish broke.

I will check the rain gauge when it gets lighter.

After the storm blew on, it rained gently off and on through the evening and the night. I love the sound of rain. Our windows were open to capture the cool air (we famously do not turn on the house AC unless it is really, really hot, which for Warren means an inside temperature of 83 or so; we might have to renegotiate that limit, given my recovery) and I read into the evening, listening to the soft sounds. I fell asleep listening to the rain, smiling.

After I woke at 4:00, I could hear our various wind chimes that hang in the dogwood tree outside our bedroom window. Not clanging wildly but an occasional soft ting of metal or a beat of bamboo.

As I continue to recover, I remind myself that last week's medical madness was a reminder of life, of precious life, of the fragility of here and now. When friends ask me how I am feeling, I reply "fragile," as in "likely to break at the least puff of air." But as I sit here writing, I think of "fragile" as more like a spiderweb—gossamer, seemingly insubstantial. But look at a spiderweb and marvel: how do such tiny little threads do anything at all? They do amazing things. There is strength in a web, in those threads, as the late, great E.B. White aptly recognized decades ago in writing Charlotte's Web. 

And maybe that's what I feel now, after this latest event. There are strands to repair and new ones to throw down, but I am still here.

The web held.

*****

Later note: It is just before noon as I type this post in. The rain gauge showed we received a half inch of rain.

And my dear husband repaired the fish this morning. He worries about me putting it back outside and running the risk of it breaking again. "But I want it in the gardens," I said. Well, maybe it needs a sturdier location.

 We'll see.

Didn't See That Coming!

Well, just when you think things are swinging along, life throws you a curve ball. This past week was a whopper. I am writing from Riverside Hospital, where I have been since, oh, about 8:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, when the Life Flight helicopter from our hometown hospital, where I had been since 2:00 a.m., touched down on the concrete pad.

Ending first: I am doing fine, I will probably (I hope) be discharged tomorrow. What landed me here may have been a thread of what hit me so hard in 2023; my doctors are still scratching their heads. But it is what it is.

So I have no gardening news. 

But I have great culinary shots of hospital food over the course of the week. When I first arrived, I was on a clear liquid diet only:

Then they advanced me to regular diet, but I was so out of the habit of eating that I just stared at what I ordered and nibbled around it:

This morning, however, I hit my stride. Bacon, blueberry muffin: life is good!

This whole episode reminded me of what I learned so hard a few years ago: how fragile and beautiful life is. I would be lying if I said that I just sailed through this. There was more than one night that had me staring out the window at downtown Columbus, thinking of my family, my friends, my garden, and my dear husband:

Pretty much a constant

I am ready to return home and get back to my daily life. There is a garden to tend to and a life to be lived. But for now, I just put in my lunch order...let's see how the grilled cheese sandwich is! 

*****

I am writing this on my Chromebook, not my Mac. Scratching my head at the formatting changes. Ehhhhh.

This Year's Gardens: Chapter 5

What a change a week can bring! We have had cool days, we have had drizzly days, we have had sunny days, we have had just days. 

And the garden has responded.

I have been heading outside to water the gardens in the early morning, usually between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. This quiet morning practice gives me time to take stock of myself and the day ahead. I listen to the earliest birds, I watch the sky change color, I note the clouds moving overhead, and I try (and often succeed) in staying rooted in the immediate moment. There has been a lot of overload lately on all fronts, so the quiet time has become an important element to my day.

This morning I changed it up a little bit. After finishing watering, I grabbed a couple of garden tools and—wait for it—actually did some weeding. 

April, weeding? Yeah. April, weeding. Check to see if the sky is indeed falling. 

Don't get me wrong. I think weeding is important. I think it should be done regularly. I just rarely (somewhere closer to never) get around to doing it. But something about the early hour, the hush, the quiet of this morning moved me to stay out among the garden, pulling up weeds, tending a little bit more than usual to the dirt and the plants.

And having done it this morning, I may just find myself doing it more regularly. Maybe. Possibly.

So here's where things stand at the end of the first week of June. The Hej garden is doing fine, especially the potatoes. I indeed called my aunt Gail about the potatoes and even sent her a picture of them, to her great delight. The photo arrived yesterday; Gail called me and we both laughed and laughed about the potatoes.

The Hej Garden

The kitchen garden is coming to life: the basil is finally stirring, the tomatoes are putting out blossoms (no tomatoes yet though). The peppers are holding back, demanding warmer weather. The back of that garden is a flower bed: sunflowers, cosmos (which I just broadcast each spring from the seeds gathered at the end of the prior summer), some zinnia and some wildflower seeds that I also just strewed about back a few weeks ago.

The kitchen garden 

And the same from the side

The kitchen garden is also where I have a small stand of milkweed; the blossoms are just starting to change towards their opening shades.

Milkweed blossoms forming

June has just started; we will see what it holds. I saw the first firefly two nights ago, we are starting to eat green onions from the red sets I picked up on markdown back several weeks ago. 

There is more to come in this year's gardens, from tomatoes to peaceful morning meditations. 

May I be open to it all. 

This Year's Gardens: Chapter 4

Red cabbages

As May closes out, I thought I would update the garden report. A lot has happened since I posted earlier this month. Despite May being colder and wetter than previous years, the seeds and plants are doing what seeds and plants do: grow.

The Hej garden is valiantly catching up from my false start of starting seeds inside and then trying to transplant them outside. There are cucumber and zucchini plants popping their heads up. 

And, to my absolute delight, there are potatoes! 

Potatoes! 

I talk with my Aunt Gail, my dad's only sibling, a couple of times a week. It is a way for both of us to share information as to Dad's well-being. We have grown very close over the last several months and we share more than just family updates as we laugh and talk. Gail has gardened all of her life, from Ohio to Guam to Chula Vista, California, and we keep each other abreast of our gardens' achievements. Being in far southern California, Gail has been eating fresh vegetables out of her garden for weeks now and, talking last night, reeled off a list of everything she has already been picking. She knows that we are weeks behind her; last night I told her what was up and blossoming. I did not know about the potatoes until this morning (we were out of town several days this week) and I am so thrilled to see them that I may call her just to announce that WE HAVE POTATOES!

The kitchen garden is much more sedate. It looks cleaner and crisper (because it is) and the various vegetables and flowers are starting to thrive. 

There are already blossoms on some of the tomatoes, so there might (might) be a tomato or two by the end of June. That may be overly optimistic on my part: last year I did not have that first tomato until July 14; the prior year July 19. But when you never buy tomatoes from the grocery, only eating them during the season, that first tomato means so much.

Warren and I have spent time working on the flower beds, which we plant in perennials, and we have filled a few large planters with annuals for the deck. My children's earliest pottery attempts are back in the garden, from Sam's T-Rex about to be engulfed by a tidal to a very, very early fish by Ben.

Sam's T-Rex

Ben's fish 

Finally, no garden update would be complete without a photo of this:

What, you may ask, is that? That, my friends, is a Leysa pepper, the pepper I pinned my hopes to earlier this spring and got nothing in return, either from the starts or from the three I started after that earlier failure. A few weeks ago, laughing at myself, I tucked three seeds into a pot and said, "Do something."

And it did. 

Will this ever get large enough to move outside, let along produce a blossom? I doubt it. but there it is. 

The Do Over Mitts

Most evenings, I write a note of tasks for the next day: water garden, pull the trash. Yesterday I was planning to wash a load of laundry and I wanted to make sure that the oven mitts were washed. So I printed DO OVEN MITTS. Only in my haste, I had written "over" not "oven."

DO OVER MITTS.

I used to take regular walks with a friend who had a "do over" policy in her household. If her birthday failed to live up to her expectations, she would announce a "do over" birthday and expect her husband to honor her command and give her the birthday she felt she deserved. (Note: I do not know if the "do over rule" applied to anyone else in the house.) 

So I laughed when I saw my Do Over note. What a convenient accessory to own if a day did not unfurl the way I thought it should. I could just pull on my Do Over Mitts and get a new one! 

Lately there has been a load of overload in this household—not all bad overload, but overload all the same. I often get to the end of a day with some things completed, but always at the expense of getting to other things and, before I know it, the day has dissolved into night. 

Where's those Do Over Mitts when you really need them?

I wrote this post last night in bed—the least likely place for me ever to write. (As in "never.") I had gone to bed early, exhausted after a day full of heavy gardening (a lot of mulch, a lot of weeding) and other demands on my time, not to mention Warren's time as he did the heavy lifting on the garden front. (And he has his own overloaded days right now.) I had no Do Over Mitts to redo the day—maybe one with less mulch and more energy—but that's okay. That I managed to scribble this tiny bit of writing, using the pen and notepad I keep on my nightstand, was enough of a bonus to end the day on a solid note.

Even without Do Over Mitts.