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.

This Year's Gardens: Chapter 3

It has been over a month since I last wrote about our gardens. Trust me, that was not because I was so busy that I couldn't squeeze in a post. No, it was because the two main gardens—our kitchen garden and the Hej garden—just got planted yesterday and today.

Read that again: just got planted yesterday and today. 

So why the delay? Well, we just had our last (light) frost last week. And while we are supposedly at or past our frost date here in Ohio, that threw a kink into the plans. But on the bright side, unlike last year, I got to Miller's Country Gardens early in May, so I did not get shut out of their best plant starts like I did last year. 

With Warren tilling the soil and me hobbling around (yes, the feet are still an issue; I am still in Stage 2 of what we hope is a four-stage process), we tackled the kitchen garden first, which is the one right next to the house. 

There are seven tomato plants this year. This is the very first year in a long, long time when I did not go hog wild on tomatoes. (I did say to Warren yesterday, when we were working on the kitchen garden, that I had tomato anxiety. Only seven plants? Only seven?) Perhaps to compensate, there are 14 peppers plants. (Hey, peppers freeze well.) The back of the garden, against the garage wall, has sowed seeds: sunflowers, wildflower mixes, and cosmos. There is then a line of red onion sets (more about those later). In the front of the garden, there is a lot of sown basil and lettuce. And that's it.

The Hej garden was a but more challenging, in part because I had a gigantic fail. Warren tilled it one last time yesterday, and got it fenced. He dug a potato trench for me, which I filled, and then I went ahead and planted three red cabbage. That was yesterday. Today I went out early and finished up ALL of the planting. 

There are some stories to tell.

I'll start with the potatoes. Several years ago (10? More?), we grew tomatoes when my down-the-street neighbor Scott gave us seed potatoes that he didn't want to mess with. We had some limited success with them, but not enough to do it again. This year though I had a bag of potatoes start growing eyes, lots of them. 

I had nothing to lose by planting these. Although these were organic golds, I purchased the bag earlier this year for a whopping 99 cents at the marked-down produce shelf at Kroger. We had several meals before they started growing more and more eyes. I figured we already got our money's worth, and if we get more potatoes from planting them, so much the better. A little work with a knife, and these babies were ready to go into the trench. 

Here's hoping!

Now to the red onions. We were at Menards on Friday so that Warren could buy plywood to finish bell cases for clients. Strolling towards the checkout, I see bags of onion sets, red or white, marked down to $2.75. There were 100 to the bag. Sure I bought one. 

Some of the bag went in the kitchen garden, planted close together and deep down for early green onions, which we buy regularly for salads and garnish. The rest went into the Hej garden planted shallow, for late summer big onions. And, as I sat down today to catch up my garden journal, I saw that the onions came with a 1 year guarantee: if they don't grow, mail the UPC code and the sales receipt back to the packer/grower and they will mail a refund. 

That ranks right up there with the 99 cents potatoes, as far as I'm concerned.

Now I come to the difficult part of the story: the huge fail. Worry not, I rescued the garden, but lesson learned. 

In my late March post, I talked about the seeds I had started indoors and how they were coming along. Yes, they were indeed. So well that I paid them no attention, except to make sure they stayed wet enough to grow (I had them in lidded containers). 

Easy peasy.

Well, easy peasy until I went to plant the zucchini plants this morning. No one told me (although when I reread the seed packet as I looked at my losses, I should have known) that zucchini seedlings like lots of room. LOTS of room. And that if you start them as seedlings indoors and have them too close together, the roots will tangle and your hard work will be undone.

True that. Out of all the zucchini starts, I managed to get one planted without the stems snapping. The rest were a total loss.

Fortunately, I still had several seeds left from the original packet, and so planted the zucchini rows like I always had in the past: one seed at a time.

The cucumbers I had started indoors were similarly tangled, but they seem to be made of sturdier stuff than the zucchini. So all but one or two went into the ground, and I seeded five in the next row as insurance.

The very last items in the Hej garden? Remember those Leysa peppers I had such high hopes for? Four sprouted. At the same time I started those, I also started seeds taken from grocery store peppers, which did considerably better than the Leysas. So I ended up planting one Leysa (the other three went into a pot indoors to see if they might grow even a little bit) and 10 peat pots of the other, just to see what might happen. If we get more peppers, great. If not, oh well.

The seeds from grocery peppers are on the lefthand tray.

Maybe we'll get a Leysa. 

When all was said and done, the Hej garden looked like this:

The potato trench is the lighter swath on the right, running front to back.

So  here's where we are at mid-May. Two vegetable gardens planted, and we should know in the next few weeks where things stand. 

Maybe.

A Long Bus Ride

The Justice Bus in Delaware in April 2025

In May 2024, I wrote about that month's Justice Bus and finding myself in full advising mode because of last-minute and unexpected shortages of our attorney volunteers. 

May 1 was this month's Justice Bus and guess what? 

Yep.

The Ides of March have nothing on our May Justice Bus days.

One of our regular volunteers had an urgent matter come up that forced him to withdraw two days before the May Bus day. I could not find another volunteer to take one session, let alone the four that the attorney who had to step out takes. So I swallowed hard and hoped for no-shows.

We are now in the fourth month of serving hot sandwiches at our Bus sessions and, as the cook, I spent Wednesday cooking (shredded turkey with onions) and making sure I had the other items—napkins, carryout containers, a tablecloth, rolls, and such—ready to go. While I cooked and prepped, I also thought about what the May Justice Bus might hold. We had a solid slate of clients, and I knew of at least one with an unusually complex situation.

Thursday dawned gray and damp. With Warren's assistance (he always shuttles me and the food and helps me get it inside), I arrived early, set up the food table, touched base with Judy, our law librarian, talked with Scott, the Justice Bus staff attorney, and took a deep breath.

The clients started arriving.

Four hours later, Scott and I each finished up within a few minutes of one another, with Scott then helping me sort out a stack of copied court papers for my last client to take with her. Our regular Bus schedule is four sessions of 45 minutes each (three hours), starting at 10:00 a.m. and finishing around 1:00 p.m. This day, because the final two clients had detailed and unusual situations that took extra time, it was a little after 2:00 p.m. before the last two clients exited and we were done.

When we were finished and met back up, Scott had that dazed look one gets from hours of intense focus and I'm sure my face matched his. We were both exhausted. And hungry. Scott immediately made and started eating two sandwiches. He and I talked briefly about a few Bus notes to follow up on, Judy helped pull down signs, Warren (who'd come earlier thinking, as did I, that I would be done earlier, so he had sat and waited) helped me break down and pack away the food, and I took one last circuit through the areas we had used to make sure none of us had left anything behind. Scott packed his gear up, and we followed him out the front doors of the library, waving goodbye to Judy, who was outside collecting the parking cones. Finally, some five and a half hours after I had arrived, I was on my way home (and grateful that we only live four blocks away).

I am writing this Friday night. I am still tired. It was a long Bus day. Not counting the Bus, there are a lot of extra matters piled on my plate right now, so that adds to the tiredness. Oh, and let's not forget my feet! I am on Stage 2 of what we (my podiatrist and I) hope will only be a four stage process to get them back to functional capacity. (Stay tuned!)

But—and this is from the heart—it was a GREAT Bus day. Any day I can work alongside friends and colleagues to help strengthen this community—with legal advice, with food, with listening, with our presence—is a great day.

P.S. As I looked back at the May 2024 post before posting this, I scrolled down and saw that I had posted a photo of the first spiderwort of 2024, noting that it had bloomed three days earlier. I started laughing. Just yesterday I took a photo of the first spiderwort of 2025! 

And here it is:

Some things are just meant to be! 

Sidelined Thoughts on Walking

Spring is springing! 

In recent days, I have been reminded, bluntly, that I am indeed disabled. This message came not in any dramatic way, but in the humblest of ways: my feet.

Seriously. My feet.

Back at the end of 2022, as I finished up several sessions with my podiatrist, he said words to the effect of "you don't need to see me again unless things change." I had shoes with far better support, my walking was back on track, and life was good. Even after the medical upheavals on 2023 and early 2024 (the hospitalization for acute pancreatitis, the broken wrist, the gallbladder removal, to name a few), I built my life back up, including walking. With the increasingly positive reviews coming out of Mayo, I was on a roll.

Until I wasn't.

I always have some pain/neuropathy issues with my feet. Specifically, my left foot. And while the neuropathy has abated the longer I go without treatment (20 months, but who's counting? Oh, I am...), there has always been some small pain issues in the toes (hammer toes, to name one), but nothing major. I knew from my past podiatry history that, like my beloved Aunt Ginger, the metatarsals were spreading apart as I aged, making that foot more prone to arthritis. 

"Genetics," said the podiatrist back then. I could live with that.

But earlier this year, I started to be aware of pain—different pain—in my right foot. Not in the same place as on the left, and not what I had been aware of before. It interrupted my sleep and, worse, it started interfering with my walking. I knew I should call my podiatrist but didn't get to it until two weeks ago, when the pain became so severe mid-walk that I came to a complete stop, tried to breathe through it, thought of calling Warren to pick me up, then finished the walk, limping. (So why didn't I call Warren? Because I was two blocks away from home and was EMBARRASSED to!) So a call to the podiatrist, an appointment last Tuesday, and, well, here we are. 

Nothing horrible mind you, but definitely not a minor "don't worry about it" either. 

The short version is BOTH of my feet are currently wrapped and taped. I am taking ibuprofen, not for the pain, but for the inflammation, which is considerable. (It even shoved the arthritis to the side both in the discussion and on the x-rays.) What I thought was a callous on my right sole was bursitis pushing out through my foot. (Who knew?) I soak the wraps off at home this Tuesday and go back to see him the following week for more follow-up. There will likely be a custom support for the right foot in the near future and probably a new pair of my regular shoes with different supports (I wear Hokas, which are not cheap). 

Oh, and NO WALKING until I see him on the 28th. And then we will see.

NO WALKING. 

Oh,  I can walk "a little," as in around the house or to the car and into a building. Short, necessary bits of walking. But NO WALKING as in "get out the door and go walk to clear my mind" walking. 

Back in 2014, I wrote about seeing the movie Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago and the powerful impact it had on me.  Last night I caught a story on CBS about walking the Camino in the 21st century. I watched it by myself first and then Warren and I watched it together. When we finished, I turned to him and told him I was a bit sad seeing it. My answer surprised Warren. Why was I sad? Because it reminded me of how, grateful beyond grateful though I am to still be here a decade later, I still will never walk the Camino and that loss will always be in me. 

A few weeks after seeing the movie in 2014, I blogged about the act of pilgrimage in and of itself, independent of the Camino. I went back and reread that one in finishing today's post. For me (me, not anyone else; I don't pretend to know what motivates others), my life has to have a strong element of pilgrimage to be meaningful. It is tied up with my commitment to tikkun olam and to strengthening this community.  

And I can do that even while sidelined from walking. 

But I really, really want the walking back. Stay tuned. 

And at the End of One

As I have done for several years, and as many other blogger friends do, I track our grocery spending annually. "Grocery" means food bought for home preparation and consumption, and common household items such as toilet paper and laundry detergent. I do not track our eating out expenses. With very rare exception, we don't eat out, and "eating out" includes getting takeout meals or an ice cream cone. Those costs almost never exceed $50.00 a month, even when we head to Mayo, and in any year, we might eat out (except for the occasional ice cream cone) maybe, oh, four of the twelve months. 

So, looking at First Quarter 2025 grocery spending, the results are...

Eye opening. 

At the end of three months, our grocery expenditures were (drum roll, please) $436.10, or an average of $145.37 per  month. Of that amount, a whopping $13.65 was household: parchment paper and toilet paper. That is 3% of the overall spending.

3%. 

The rest was for food: perishables, some stock-up shopping. Okay, there was what I will call a "splurge" from our trip to Mayo in late February. Between the Kwik Trip cinnamon rolls, which have gone up in cost (what hasn't?) and hitting the Rochester Trader Joe's (the only Trader Joe's we shop at, period), we bought and brought home $31.94 of groceries on that trip. 

Okay, okay, we can live with that kind of splurge. As I go through the notes I make (yes, I keep a spreadsheet and make notes as to what the purchases are), I see I wrote "This is NOT about deprivation." We eat well. Probably the biggest change in our diets over recent months, as a result of aging (both of us) and as a result of my major hospitalization and the physical/medical fallout from it in 2023-2024, is that we simply do not eat as much as we used to. So food just lasts longer. 

How much less do we eat? Here is a recent rare meal out (it was a special Warren/April anniversary): we bought two lunch plates (and a tamale) at a local Mexican restaurant. We brought home what we did not eat and ate the leftovers later. From the whole event, in addition to the lunch at the restaurant, we got two more lunches and two more suppers at home. So that was five meals for two adults or ten meals total. To stretch it, we also had a small salad each on one supper, tortilla chips with the lunch, and a side of rice with the last supper (and there is still rice left to make another meal from). Small additions to the overall initial lunches, trust me. 

We are concentrating on "eating down" the food in our upright freezer (100 cubic feet) and that too keeps costs down. There are still frozen vegetables from 2024 (zucchini, sweet corn, pesto) that we hope to finish before the 2025 season starts. We have one turkey (Justice Bus!) and one ham still frozen. With Easter coming up, we hope ham prices drop enough that we can buy a few for the freezer. And I am wishful (but prepared to not have this one granted) that egg prices will drop even a little bit for Easter as well. 

Who knows? Who knows anything about grocery prices in these turbulent times?

First quarter is in the books; let's see what the next three months bring! 

This Year's Gardens: Chapter 2

The zucchini at full speed

Oh my. What a difference ten days make. 

On the seed front, zukes and cukes are going great guns:

And the cucumbers are right there keeping pace with the zucchini! 

On the pepper front, the lowly little seeds I had dried from store-bought sweet peppers are starting to rear their tiny heads. I do not know what to expect from them as I am no doubt dealing with hybrids and who knows what this next generation will hold. But at least they are coming up! 

Who knows what they will produce, but at least they are growing! 

But my Leysas? The seeds I bought in search of a "truly" sweet pepper? Up until Wednesday, my answer was have been simple. Zilch, nada, rien. And then this one poked up, barely:

Look close in the upper right cell

Okay, maybe hope does spring eternal.

Outside, the weather has been March erratic. Warm days, then cold. Light frosts, then nothing, then light frosts again. All the same, and knowing that we are in Zone 6b (last frost date is mid-April), we are starting to do outdoor garden work. Warren suggested we till the kitchen garden and we did our first tilling today (Thursday).

It's electric. It's lightweight. It showed me who's boss.

Warren did the first pass. I raked the garden over, raking up the weeds the tiller had uprooted and then I did the second pass with the tiller.

Holy moly.

Talk about a wake-up call as to how far I have yet to go before I am capable of working consistently with our lightweight tiller. After about 30 minutes wrestling with it, I finally got enough of the hang of it that I could kinda sorta handle it.

As I started in on the garden work, I set my kitchen timer for an hour out of the gate. As I told Warren, until I build up my energy and my reserves, I need to watch my time. And I am glad I did; I was ready to gather up my tools when it went off.

We have ambitious plans to clean up, clear out, restore, and expand our two front beds, the back perennial bed, and the small bed that hugs the back side of our house. And of course there are the kitchen garden and the Hej garden to turn our efforts to for this year's vegetables.

Here's to more tilling! 

First tilling done! 

Update

I wrote this blog out by longhand Thursday night, while I sat at an evening rehearsal of the Mansfield Symphony. This morning, before I came upstairs to type this post, I took a look again at the sluggard Leysas and this is what I saw:

The second little head is in the lower left corner of the lower right cell. 

Two are now poking up their heads! 

Here's hoping.