Daily Archives: September 26, 2020

Anoka County, Garden, Great Wheel, Hydroponics, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Plants, Science, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Gardner Me

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Kiss the Ground. Netflix. Not a huge fan of documentaries. Not sure why. I love fiction, not non-fiction books though I read them from time to time.

But this one. Recommended by long time friend Tom Crane. Didn’t say much new, maybe nothing for me, but it pulled my heart. Reminded me of who I’ve been. Who I’ve left behind.

Gardner me. That guy that used to spend hours planting flowers, amending soil, weeding the onions and the beans. Cutting raspberry canes back for the winter. Thinning the woods. Thinning the carrots and the beets. Lugging bags of compost. Bales of marsh hay. Planning flower beds so there would be something blooming during the entire growing season. Hunting for heirloom seeds.

I had plans. I read books about adapting gardening techniques in xericulture. Thought about this idea and that. Read a lot before our move. But, then. Prostate cancer and a cascade of other distractions. Divorce. Arthritis. Kate’s troubles.

The whole horticulture act slipped into yesterday. And I miss it. Even the cussing at the critters. A notable reminder. Heirloom Tomatoes. Oh, my god. I buy them when they’re good. Five bucks a pound. I eat them like the fruit they are as a fruit. The taste. So good. No comparison to those raised for mechanical harvesting. Not even the same thing, imho.

Our carrots and beets and leeks and garlic and beans. Our honeycrisp apples. Granny. Plums. Cherries. The onions drying on the old screen door in the shed Jon built. A basement pantry filled with canned vegetables, canned fruit. Jars of honey from Artemis Honey.

A greenhouse. That’s the only way I could return to gardening. I’m no longer strong enough for the kind of gardening we did in Andover, Minnesota. I’d need plants on a bench about hip height. But I’m seriously considering it. The dogs. Yes. Kate. Yes. But, plants, too. Our own food on our table. Nurturing plants. I’m sad I left it behind.

We’ll see.

Aging, Family, Health, Science, Third Phase

Apres

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Kate. Our ancientrail of man and woman together. Dr. Gustave and his wife, the artist Lindsay Smith Gustave. The cataract, the eye. Its evolution from one-celled life. The hand and the eye together. Art. Seeing and making. UFO’s in Ode’s mind. The threat to our democracy. Our opportunity to act.

In the car to see Dr. Gustave. One day after. Bright light. Eye still dilated. Colors more intense, more clarity. Less sfumato. In closing the dominant left eye, the one with the new lens replacing its cataract, I can return to the sfumato that the cataract created. Damned if I don’t prefer it in some ways. Aesthetically it’s pleasing to me, the gentle blending of colors, their slight smokiness, which I couldn’t identify before. Guess I’ll have to high these eyes to a gallery of Renaissance painting after the second one’s done.

You had an extra large cataract. Yes! So I take out a cataract shaped like a walnut and I slip in a lens shaped like a plate. When the two sides of the eye close over the plate, there can sometimes be a fold. If you get a straight line in your vision at night, that’s the fold. No matter. If it’s still there, we’ll just laser it out.

This morning, here in the loft, as I look at my banks of track lighting, they have a lance of light through them at about a sixty degree angle. It does not impair my vision. We’ll see.

My distance vision is already 20/25 and will get to 20/20 in time. I could watch TV without glasses last night. This computer screen is far less fuzzy than it was on Wednesday.

At the lower left of my left eye, I have a sensation of light. Not a big deal. If it hung around though…

No resistance work for a month. Can do aerobics. No heavy lifting. (see the resistance work) Not sure what I’m gonna do with the Chewy order when it comes.

Watched a live, real time video of cataract surgery last night. Takes about 8 minutes or so. Involves slicing the mature organelle into quarters, then vacuuming them up with a teeny vacuum. The lens slips in through a tiny incision, unfolds, then gets straightened out, flattened. The edges of the eye right there are polished to prevent problems later.

All this time a retractor has the eyeball served up like an over easy egg. John, the nurse anesthetist, told me not to fight the retractor. I didn’t. Didn’t even know it was there.

Surprisingly tired both Thursday and yesterday.

Around 4:15 p.m. Kate and I drove into Swedish hospital. She had to get a drive up Covid test before her catscan on Tuesday and the draining of the fluid on her lungs the next day. Really hope this gives her some relief, She needs it. Meanwhile the stoma site has begun to heal. Almost normal looking.