This Year's Gardens, Part Three

Seeds from the trip last summer 

Here in central Ohio, the weather is messing around with us. A few weeks ago, we had temperatures in the 70s. Earlier this week was snow. Today is cloudy and mild; tomorrow it is supposed to be almost 80.

I have yet to start any outside gardening. Heck, I have yet to clean up the gardens, let alone till them! But all the same, I did get started today in this year's gardens. (I just realized I had been titling these posts "This Year's Garden," singular, when it clearly is "This Year's Gardens," plural.) 

Last year, I had to plant the zucchini three times, twice for the squirrels. They dug up every single seed and ate them all, sometimes leaving the empty shells to taunt me. We had zucchini finally only because Warren came up with a homemade seed starter and I got enough plants going to transplant them. This year, I am not even bothering to try the seeds outside. The peat pots starter from our neighbors was activated today and planted with zucchini and cantaloupe (which the squirrels also devoured in seed stage last year).

Loaded up and ready to go! 

As I was finally getting my mind and hands into the gardens, I decided to go ahead and try to sprout seeds from last summer's trip and from a large globe thistle patch in the neighborhood. I'd been saving small yogurt cups and ice cream containers over the winter just for this purpose. For these, I am taking the "they're plants, they know what to do" approach. We'll see.

Globe thistle seeds

When I finished, I slid all of the containers under my plant rack. They'll get some sun there and I can keep an eye on them, especially the zucchini. If it does get as warm tomorrow and rain holds off, I may even make it into the kitchen garden to clear away some of last year's debris. 

And then there is the redbud. We have a redbud tree out front that we planted a few years ago. In pruning it earlier this year, I took one branch inside to see if I could get the buds to open up, setting it in a jelly jar on the table. Yes, the buds did open up. And then leaves starting sprouting on the end of the branches. 

One morning, Warren looked and said, "It's growing roots."

And it was. 

They are only ("only") very fine filaments floating in the water. But I am intrigued. Can I get the redbud to root? Will we have another redbud to plant at some point later this year? 

Only time will tell.

Of Time and Books

A month or so ago, I picked a slim paperback out of a Little Free Library on one of the routes I take to or from our local library. The book was Truck by John Jerome, a 1977 non-fiction work about the author's purchase and rebuilding of an old pickup truck to use at his New England home. Think Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which came out three years before Truck, with an attitude.

I started reading it last night. From hints in the text, I deduced that Jerome was older than I was by a decade or more. Curious, I Googled him. John Jerome, American non-fiction author, 1932-2002. Among his works were Truck, On Mountains, The Sweet Spot in Time, Stone Work...

Stone Work? 

Stone Work!

I pulled out my very first commonplace book, started sometime in the second half of the 1980s. About six pages in, there were several quotes from Stone Work by John Jerome. 

I read Stone Work when it first came out in 1989. Beautiful, lean writing about Jerome's tearing down, moving, and rebuilding a stone wall on his New England property: "two stones on one, one stone on two." 

I captured this sentence too: "October in the woods is a forced march into the sensory life..."

In 1989, I was living in Stockton, California, with my then husband and a very young Ben. I found Stone Work the way I found most of my books back then, by gleaning the new book titles at what was probably the central branch of the Stockton library. Stone Work came home with me and Jerome's words buried themselves in my head and in my commonplace book.

And here I am, over three decades later, reading him again. 

I open a book, I look up the author, and the past comes flooding over me. As Faulkner pointed out, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

John Jerome was 69 when he died. Many of his books are now out of print. But one of them, in a well-worn paperback. was here for anyone who wanted it. "Riches, riches, everywhere, just for the taking." (Yes, that too is from Stone Work.) 

I think Jerome would have enjoyed this roundabout path from 1989 to 2022. I know I have. 

Community

 Blogger Kim from Out My Window posted a short message today on my post of a few days ago: Tried to read your new post and it is gone. Are you okay?

What Kim saw was an operator error on my part. I am writing my exit piece for Medium and went back to an early (2009) post of mine about what I write about: small moments. In opening that post in draft form, I was able to copy the text I wanted cleanly, but when I went to close it, it posted as a brand new post today.

NOPE! I goofed. So I took it down. From that long ago, it was okay to let it go. But it left an electronic trace all the same and Kim reached out. 

Community comes in many shapes and sizes. It came locally today when our Legal Clinic partnered with the Ohio Justice Bus to offer a Domestic Relations Clinic at the courthouse parking lot. I was there for almost five hours, which was about hour and a half hours more than I should have been, but I was so impressed by our attorney volunteers and their dedication that I could not leave.

And community comes in our blogosphere, when those of us who may never meet in person nonetheless follow and care about others out there. Like Kim reaching out to make sure I was okay. 

More than okay with support like that, Kim. Thank you for leading with your heart.

Decluttering My Day

 I am on Joshua Becker's "Becoming Minimalist" email list. I have an on again/off again attitude towards those emails; typically I skim them then delete them. But today's article, 20 "First Step" Decluttering Ideas, caught my eye. True to his style, Becker advocated starting small: Declutter the inside of your car (#1), Clear off your nightstand (#5). Baby steps to encourage the reader to take more steps in simplifying their homes and, more to the point, their lives. 

I have felt worse—increasingly worse—physically lately than I have in a long time. Okay, than I have in years. Warren and I head back to Mayo in June, and of course for now I am continuing treatment, but I have questions and observations growing in my mind. And those questions and observations are touching off issues of decluttering—not of the top of the refrigerator (#10), but of my life.

Back in February, looking at what the spring held for me in Legal Clinic, I identified three major Clinic projects, separate and apart from the ongoing assignment of clients to attorneys, that I wanted to see accomplished. One is done. One is almost done (and will be done as of this Thursday afternoon). The third is on hold at the other end of the collaboration, so there is nothing to do right now. Clinic is, for all practical purposes, decluttered.

I'm deactivating my Medium account as an author, I hope by the end of this week. Will I continue to subscribe to and read Medium? Probably. There are some great voices on it. Will I continue to keep my account open to write? No. Not because I am lazy. Not because I feel inferior to some of those great voices (I mean, it is cool to read Barack Obama). But because there is too little of me and, frankly, this blog suits me and my observations best. (There is an E.B. White quote to that effect about his own essays; he felt he excelled best in that format when he wrote about his small observations about everyday life, but I am not going to search my commonplace books to find it right now. And White wrote beautifully and strongly in many formats despite his self-deprecation.) So this blog will continue; my life is full of small moments.

Deactivating my Medium account will declutter the writing corner of my life. 

Today earlier was brilliantly sunny. I thought about being outside, but kept doing inside things, trying to work through how lousy I felt. At about 1:20 today, I crawled into our bed, shaking and miserable. On waking up some 20 minutes later, I came downstairs and followed through on an email I had sent my friend Cindy in which I said first I "hoped" to get back outside in the sunshine, then added '"I know, I know—I need to get out!" 

And I did go out. Yes, I carried some gardening gloves and clippers with the thought that I would do some early garden work, but I quickly set those down. Our deck furniture is still in wraps, so I sat on the deck itself with my back against the tarped furniture. I added a Zildjian ball cap to shade my eyes. And I started writing (in longhand) this blog while feeling the sun, looking up at the blue sky with its scrim of clouds, listening to the birds.

The notebook in which I keep progress notes (how I feel physically) was the only one I had easily at hand, so I wrote in the back pages of it. The cover of that notebook is titled "Here's To Strong Women" with subtitles under it. One of them is "May We Be Them." As I diminish a bit each day, I wonder whether I am a strong woman by continuing on? Or just a stubborn, nay, foolish one?

Back to Joshua and decluttering. In today's trash were my worn out winter boots (which gave me a severe painful callous that may have to be removed by the podiatrist in all likelihood) and the most aged and worn of my three pairs of Skechers, about the only shoes I wear anymore. "Being frugal is not the same as being cheap," say my favorite frugal YouTubers, Larry and Hope Ware of Under the Median. I had been holding onto the boots, despite their being worn out AND painful to my callous, and the shoes thinking—what? That I'd get "one more winter" out of the boots? Another summer out of the worn out shoes? (To complete the picture, realize that the boots have resided behind a living room chair where I tossed them a few months ago to get rid of them, and the shoes had been stuffed into a too stuffed closet since, oh, maybe last summer?) (#9: Declutter old and unused coats and other items from your coat closet.) 

Putting them in the trash, finally, made me feel I was entitled to take care of my feet. Sometimes I forget that taking care of myself is okay. Sometimes I let my mind get cluttered up with thoughts of I might as well hold onto the bad ones "just in case." Just in case of what? That I need to injure my feet some more? 

Another thought decluttered, along with a bit of our living space.

As I wrote out there on our deck, I filled up on sunshine and bird song. My body relaxed and gained some ground. I had to get up to replace the pen as the first gave out. (This is a household of many pens from conferences and percussion trade shows,; we have pens everywhere. Okay, that is cheap and frugal. But this habit also adds to the stream of waste in the world, so that part is not cool.) My knees, feeling every dislocation from my younger years, every step ever climbed/walked/knelt, let their displeasure be known. When I sat back down, I changed my position and thought about my increasing balance and mobility issues. Some of that upcoming Mayo time is in the Neurology Department, a first. For now, I'm not going to let that clutter my mind.

All things come to an end and so did my time on the deck. As I have been typing this, the sky has gone gray and overcast. But oh, the sun! And the birds! And life. That time outside reset me. So maybe, just maybe, I decluttered some of my soul and my heart for now.

All Those Hams

 

All in! 

Yesterday I wrote about our purchasing six hams, given the pre-Easter loss leaders at two local grocery chains. I speculated perhaps some of them would have to reside in my dad's freezer.

Not.

Sometimes I even surprise myself! 

First Quarter Pennies Review

In early January, I wrote about this household's money issues for 2022, noting that with my retirement a few weeks earlier, my income had shifted dramatically. Now that the first quarter of 2022 is over, I am looking at where things stand.

The biggest shared cost in this household is groceries (which includes some household items such as dish soap and toilet paper). I see that in my early January post I noted that "food costs have risen." Well, that was a flaming understatement. (Question: Can understatements even be flaming, given that they are meant to be presented as being less important?) 

Around here, food costs have risen steeply for some products. Let's just say I never thought I'd be glad that Warren doesn't like to eat beef. Costs have risen across the board in all the stores. Our overall grocery expenditures have ticked upwards. In January, I said I hoped to come in under $200/month for the year. At the end of the first quarter, we have averaged $206.03 a month. Close but not there. (I would also note that supply shortages are an ever present issue as well, adding to the uncertainty of any visit to the grocery store.)

I am planning to spend most of April using what we already have at hand in the freezer or pantry when I cook, so April might be a lower cost month. Might. We did buy six (yes, six) smoked hams today for the freezer. With Easter coming up, both Aldi and Meijer used hams as their loss leaders in this week's ads and we took advantage of the deals. That's ham for a year in this household. Storage will not be a problem. We have a freezer in our basement, as does my dad. Some of those hams will reside with him until later in 2022 but right now they are still hanging out here. 

As I wrote in my earlier post, I had set aside enough money from my 2021 income that my insurance premiums (Medicare and all the rest) for 2022 are all covered. At the start of the year, attending a webinar on myeloma put on by the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, I learned that the LLS has patient co-pay assistance programs for various cancers, including myeloma. These programs cover cancer-related costs (treatment and doctors) and insurance premiums. Insurance premiums! I applied, received an award, and have begun submitting my 2022 premiums. Processing is slow and I have not seen any reimbursements show up yet, but that will help build the 2023 reserves. 

At the end of the first quarter, all is smooth on the money front in our home. Given the state of things all over the world, I am grateful. And privileged.