Tag Archives: Kate

permaculture

Friday

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Lughnasa                                    Waning Harvest Moon

Paula Westmoreland came today for a walk through on the next to last phase of their work here.  This time we added a woodland edge to the woods visible from our kitchen table.  We also added shrubs and trees between ourselves and the Olsons, our line of site neighbors to the east.  It’s beginning to look like they will require watering.  Bummer.

The ten bales of hay I bought on Labor Day are now out of the truck.  Two of them will go as mulch for the new plantings in the prairie toward the Olsons.  8 will facilitate my attempt to recreate the compost pile.  It has been dismantled and spread out into a nice nest for two large sized puppies who will go nameless.

Kate’s home for the third straight day with what might be H1N1.  Whatever it is, it’s kicked her butt and it takes some doing to accomplish that.

Garden work is the order of the weekend.  That plus some more decluttering–the project that keeps on giving.

Aging, Garden, Health

Surgery and Rigel Back Home Pics

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Lughnasa                                     Waning Harvest Moon

Kate’s decided to have surgery.  A scheduler will call tomorrow or Monday to set up a date, probably mid-to-late October.  She’ll have 2 days in the hospital and 4-6 weeks of basic rest for recovery.  The surgeon believes this will alleviate up to 80% of her current lower back symptoms.  The neck will remain for now.

Kate used our dehydrator last night, drying roma tomatoes.  We’re experimenting right now, seeing what we like dried.  All part of the grow it, store it, eat it plan.

Rigel minutes after her return home.

rigelathome

Vega and Rigel, happy to be together again

rigelaround-vega

Vega has a swimming pool, but she likes the watering bowl, too.

vegainwater

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Politics

Still No Rigel

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Lughnasa                      Waning Harvest Moon

The second night with no Rigel.  I took fliers to filling stations, veterinary offices, grocery stores and the local humane society.  Tomorrow I plan to distribute a few more at baseball fields, the town rec center, those sorts of places.  After that, we call back to various places and wait.

The driveway has a nice fresh black coat on it; we have a woodland edge to balance our orchard and few trees planted out in the prairie grass.  My neighbor (not the suicidal one) came over and noted we’d planted a couple of hawthorns on his property.  He said he didn’t care and I said I didn’t either.  They’ll have the same affect there and at that point the properties run into each other on an open field.

Kate’s home.  She looks better, but still ragged.  We see the surgeon on Thursday morning.  Could be some big changes here after that.

The second in my series:  Liberalism in Our Time has gotten hold of me, it’s now the filter through which I read articles, think about politics and  our common life.  I just learned about a guy named Herbert Crowley today.  He was the architect (and an architect) of what some call the welfare state.  His thought has some interesting resonance for me, since I’m struggling in this series with my radical critique of liberal thought.  When I get to the Future of Liberalism, I’m going to have come down somewhere on that question, which I’ve  sort of neatly side-stepped so far.

Cooking, Dogs, permaculture

One of Those Days

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Lughnasa                       Waning Harvest Moon (visible in the western daytime sky)

Kate has begun the dreary process of checking with animal control, vets and the humane society.  At the same time she’s begun canning tomatoes, a task she finds soothing.  It’s a good thing since she has a cold and numerous pains throughout her body.  She prefers to keep going, get things done.  In the past I’ve tried to get her to relax, take it easy a bit, but just this year I realized this is part of her spirit, her who she is-ness.  Now I congratulate her.

Today is one of those days.  Rigel’s still missing.  The borderline asphalt company will show up sometime today to seal the driveway.  Paula and the Ecological gardens folks have begun installation of a woodland edge garden.  To put a nice bow on the day I have my semi-annual teeth cleaning at 11:00.  I moved the vehicles to the street, got the gate ready for Paula, then took off and bought 10 more bales of hay from Al Pearson.

Al’s a 70+ farmer who sells his bales right off highway 10.  He bales the hay and sells it retail.  We all win.  He’s a ramrod straight 6′ 1″ sturdy Scandinavian.  He told me, “We like our repeat customers.”

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Writing

Il Dolce Far Niente

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Lughnasa                             Waxing Harvest Moon

Kate and I sat out on the deck with the dogs.   Il dolce far niente.   The sweetness of doing nothing was a theme for paintings in the mid-Victorian era.  Apparently the Italians have always been after la dolce vita.

A point where Kate and I meet, where our inner worlds and outer worlds intersect,  is our horror at these moments.  There is something in the northern European blood that suspects doing nothing, finds nothing sweet about it.  Instead it has a bitter taste, something mom may have given  you when you didn’t do your chores.

These later years may be the time to catch up with the Italians, to learn how to kick back and relax.  If they’re not, then we’ll never get it, not in this turn of the wheel.

I wrote several hours in a row yesterday and today, but it was not fun.  Usually writing pleases me, gives me a sensual satisfaction as well a creative one.  Not this time.  It was as if I had tried to stick a large ball into a glass Coke bottle.  There was too little space in the three thousand words, the maybe 15-18 minutes of spoken English, to contain what I wanted to communicate.

Too much truncating, jumping, glossing.  The whole needs more metaphor, a way to condense big ideas into small spaces.  I have two metaphors that work pretty well.  I use Rembrandt’s etching of Faust and Vermeer’s painting of the Astronomer to illustrate the difference between the ancien regime and the Enlightenment.  I also use Petrarch’s letter to posterity to underscore the Italian Renaissance’s influence on our understanding of the individual.  So far, so good.

After that, though, I lean more into short summaries of complex ideas, philosophical vignettes no bigger than fortune cookies.  All this means I’m not done.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Memories

Surgery?

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Lughnasa                        Waxing Harvest Moon

This was a doctor day.  Kate and I went to see a spine surgeon she has seen before.  She leans now toward some surgical intervention since the various palliatives:  drugs, nerve root and facet joint blocks, exercise and stoicism no longer provide sufficient relief.   Surgery is the last option and in the case of matters spinal one usually chosen as such.  Her surgeon is positive about the chances for success, success measured as a substantive reduction in pain, though not cessation.

We stopped at Burger Jones for a delayed lunch.  3200 block of West Lake Street.  If you want a trip back to the late 50’s early 60’s, but updated with booze and choices in shakes and burgers you didn’t have back then, Burger Jones is the place.  Fun.

Long nap.  Just now getting roused for the remainder of the day.

Liberalism and the liberal tradition is much on my mind since  have to write a sermon for the 6th of September.  Reading, reading, reading.   Thinking.  Pondering.  Like that.

Aging, Dogs, Family, Friends

Barriers and Transitions

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Lughnasa                               Waxing Harvest Moon

The day so far.  Bought 55 granite blocks to use in constructing barriers to the dogs.  Bought 10 straw bales to reinforce a barrier to the dogs.  Do you see a pattern?

A nap, then a workout and some Sierra Club work.  The day has sped past with work and play, now winding down toward the evening when I sit with the dogs, read or watch television.  Eat supper.

Kate’s in a definite transition mode this year, perhaps even in the next few months.  The pain causes her increasing difficulty, sometimes she spends her non-work hours recovering from work.  Literally.  Not a situation that can go on forever.

The neighbor whom I have mentioned in the past, though, has bigger issues.  His mental decompensation seems to track with his physical.  He grabbed his daughter’s arm and bit her.  His wife had to call the police to come take him to a psych ward.  He returns home tomorrow with nothing different.  A sad situation.

Family, Garden, Our Land and Home

Down in the Trenches

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Lughnasa                             Waxing Harvest Moon

Kate’s pain continues.  “I don’t even  feel guilty about not going into work today,” she said.  Whoa.  That says it all.

Her condition creates  a moving target, how to balance therapies and activity with the pain and newly emerging symptoms.  We’ll find a place for her to be, at least until we have to find another one.

The gradual slide toward fall, now most noticeable in the changed angle of the sun and the decreasing average highs, has energized me.   The trench for the electrical wiring linking the honey house (in process) to the grandkids playhouse has soil over the wiring now.  The trench had to be redug where Vega and Rigel had prematurely pushed soil back into the trench.  That was work for an adze, work done while kneeling spread wide over the trench.  A wide stance, I guess you could say.

I checked the bees this morning, too, sending them love as Queen Latifah suggested in the Secret Life of Bees.  Though I love them and they seem happy, that is plentiful and busy, there is not much honey, maybe a frame and a half at most.  Why this is, I don’t know.  It seems the learning curve here will be long, but that’s ok.  I’ve got time to learn the way of the beekeeper.

Bees, Cinema and Television, Family

Pain and Work

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Lughnasa                         Waxing Harvest Moon

Kate came home early from work.  Not working, not pulling her load is hard for her to bear, psychically much harder to bear than the physical pain.  She goes to work when she is in pain, partly because that’s how doctors have been socialized, but also partly because she wants to do her share, or pick up another person’s, if necessary.

This is not a fun way to live her last full year of work.  My hope is that we can find a way, with the help, perhaps, of the two surgeons and the PM&R doc.  She is, as a co-worker told her, a strong woman.

Just watched the Secret Life of Bees.  A fine movie, feelings popping out all over the place and at unexpected moments.  “Just send out love to the bees,” Queen Latifah’s character says.  Yeah.

Dogs, Sport

Post-Op Pups

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Lughnasa                            Waxing Harvest Moon

The need to constantly monitor our two post-op pups and Kate’s difficulty with her neck and back has made me feel trapped in the house.  If I leave one of the pups in the kitchen too long, they chew up and ruin something I’d rather have.  If I let them outside, they run the risk of opening their incisions and getting an infection.  Kate’s pain has made her less able than normal to help with them.  So, I stay close, listen for chewing sounds and rotate the pups, one inside and one outside.

While Kate was here this morning, I made a quick run to the temple of the cost conscious consumer, Costco.  Got dogfood, dog treats, kitchen trash bags and two large jugs of Tide.  I discovered a while back that if you go right at 10 a.m. when they open, the chances of getting in and out in a reasonable time rise dramatically.

OK.  That’s enough whining.

How about that Favre?  He was in for two sets of downs, did a bit of this and a bit of that, nothing spectacular.  The paper claimed season ticket and jersey sales have almost made up for the money they spent on his contract.  Geez.  Here’s a bit of irony.  Tavaris Jackson followed Favre and played well into the fourth quarter.  He looked great.  His passes were crisp; he didn’t hesitate.  Seemed to know what he was about.  Then John David Booty stepped in and looked good, too.

It made wonder if the coaching staff has picked Favre for an additional reason to the apparent one, that is taking an already good team deeper into the playoff season.  Maybe, just maybe they hope his play and presence will elevate the work of Tavaris Jackson and/or John David Booty.  Maybe, just maybe Favre plays a couple of years, these guys apprentice from one of the best to play the game and become our quarterbacks of the future?  If I can think of it, someone else can, too.