Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II
Thursday gratefuls: Shadow. The leash. The last big hurdle. Tomato plants wilting in the heat, then restored by water. Rich. Susan. Tara. Marilyn. Joanne. MVP last night. The quarter Moon. The Elk Cow and her Calf crossing the road. Wild Neighbors. The second law of thermodynamics. Science. The Humanities. Colleges and universities. Learning is life. Loving is life.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Hearing on the side of merit
Week Kavannah: Wu Wei. Flow.
One brief shining: Shadow lies behind my chair, the yellow leash still attached, now in the third day of desensitization; when I take her outside for a walk, part of the process, she jumps up, paws on my chest, then her left one slipping around my waist in a clingy hug.
Dog journal: My empathy has often been close to exhaustion, not with Shadow, but because of her struggles. And mine. This relationship has not been easy. Climb one Mountain only to realize the next peak is higher and right next to the one just summited.
Natalie says the leash is the last big hurdle. God, I hope so. I’d like to settle in to a doggy rhythm with Shadow by my side. I know it’s going to happen. Not when.
Mental health: No doubt, dear reader, you caught the melancholy tones in my posts over the last six months. As so often happens for me, I only notice them much later than others.
The pain. Also exhausts my empathy, especially my empathy for myself. Avoidance comes to dominate movement. Move less. Hurt less. Though because, as Halle said, we’re meant to move, this tactic has self-defeat built in. Move less, hurt longer eventually more.
With those two drains on my empathy, Shadow’s struggles and the pain, I’ve had little left over to do what needs to be done. That is, manage all this in a healthy way.
Not to say life has been awful. No. But it has been stretched taut, leaving little room for dreams. Though.
The Greenhouse: Was a dream that is now a reality. I forgot, though Shadow should have more than alerted me to this, realizing dreams has its own cost.
This works. That doesn’t. The heat in the greenhouse, the point after all, reached 104 yesterday. I put a remote thermo sensor in it with a readout station in the house.
When I went out to check all of my Tomato Plants had shriveled, looked dead. I hit the manual button for the irrigation. It ran for twelve minutes and the Leaves filled back up. This means I will need a fan to help modulate the heat.
On the other end the temperature went into the low forties two nights ago. Tomatoes prefer night time temperatures in the sixties. Need that heater which I agreed Nathan could install later.
Learning and growth come when we move outside our comfort zones. Yeah. So I’ve heard. Well, I’ve spent plenty of time over the last six months way outside of my comfort zone. I must be learned enough by now.