Yes, it's hot

Gabe and I have been starting our walk at 6 AM.  I'm only walking every other day.  The days I don't walk, I go out to the garden early.  One day this week we disturbed a little spotted deer.  We would never have seen her, but she saw us from where she was lying in the grass, started running, and Gabe decided to protect me from her.  He chased her until she got away, then ran back and looked up at me, waiting for me to tell him what a brave boy he was.  

Our high temperatures have been in the middle 90's.  Listening to the weather folks, you would think we were all going to die from the heat.  Cliff and I laughed when a weatherman said, "Be careful of the life-threatening heat."  Really?  It's always been hot at this time of the year in Missouri.  If my grandma was around, she would wonder what the big deal is.  She never had an air conditioner in her house.  That said, we didn't either until we moved to the trailer house, which was after 2010.   But brother, I sure am glad we have it now!

June 30 our son and his wife will be here all that week and leave Sunday morning the sixth of July.  I am beginning to get things together and start fixing things I can put in the freezer so I can just take them out and cook them when we're ready.  Right now I'm going to make noodles and put them in the freezer; I make them, put them on cookie sheets to freeze, then I put them in gallon bags, ready when I need them.  My sister started doing that some time ago, and I found out it works just fine.

I must get moving, but now you all know I'm still around and doing things.  Thanks for caring.

My seldom blog posts

 In my last blog post, I just put two videos on without actually using actual words.  There's a reason for that:  I already knew very few people would watch them, but I wanted them there for myself, so when Gabe is gone, I can remember our walks.

I just don't want to blog any more.  It's harder now, because it takes a lot more time for me to get all the words right.  Even when I've spent the time doing it, I publish it and still find errors.  And I just can't think of any reason to blog.

There's always the weather, right?  This is the fourth year that we have had very little rain for our gardens.  For all of these years, the weather-guessers have promised all sorts of rain, but 90% of the storms split when they get almost to us; one half goes north and one half goes south.  When my husband and I watch the weather every evening,  they often say there's 100% chance of rain and we fake-laugh, knowing it won't happen.

In this fourth year of droughts, this morning I was reminded of the Israelites after they fled from Egypt, where they had been slaves.  When they came to the Wilderness of Sin, the whole pack of them began crying that they wished they had died in Egypt, because at least they had food to eat there, and it was great food!  They had quite the pity party.

So God gave them Manna, freshly made each morning six of the seven days each week.  Also, He gave them quails to provide them meat in the evening.  When they had no water He gave them water from a rock.  But they were never pleased.  Instead of being thankful for what they had, they griped and whined.   

This morning it came to me that I, too, am a whiner.  I don't always talk about the drought, but often, in my mind, I tell myself how much I want rain for the garden and it gets me down emotionally .  When I think about it, I don't need a garden:  In this country we can buy anything we want to eat, and it's affordable.  I just enjoy knowing I can raise food for the table... it's fun for me.  Tomatoes in grocery stores aren't good, but there are people everywhere growing home-grown tomatoes and selling them.  

So I'm going to try and stop whining about it... even in my thoughts. 

take a walk with me and my dog

I am so sorry I kept people locked out of my blog for awhile. I changed my old blog, My Country Life, so nobody could read it because there were lots of spam comments. And somehow, it affected this blog too! Actually, it was probably me that caused it, but I don't really know what or how I did it!

 

I realize when I try to show the trees on all sides I do it too fast. Walking and looking through a camera all at once isn't easy.

An experiment

Almost any gardener has one favorite vegetable in the garden, one that, if everything else in that garden failed except for that one, it would still worth having a garden.  For me and Cliff, it is tomatoes.  

Ever since 1980, I've had some amount of blight on my tomatoes; it is primarily caused by fungal or bacterial pathogens.  I shouldn't complain, because we always have enough tomatoes to eat until frost anyhow.  I have tried all kinds of tricks hoping to find something that works:  putting straw around the plants to keep them off the dirt, or always putting tomato plants in a different place than where they were in the two previous years.  I've sprayed that stinking old copper spray on them and pulled half the black leaves off the plants in hopes that would stop the death march of my plants, but alas and alack, nothing works very well.   

This year I'm trying something different.  It appears that many of the old trusted breeds have had a facelift.  I have Celebrity Plus, Jet Star Plus, Early Bird Hybrid, and Better Boy Hybrid.  Also Big Daddy, Bodacious Hybrid and Mountain Magic (that's a cherry tomato plant).  Those last two were started with seeds I planted in the garden; the others I bought as plants.  I have made a map of all my tomatoes, with their names written down so I don't forget what's in each space.  

I've learned a few things about tomato plants already, and it wasn't necessarily about blight.  For instance, if some nighttime creature eats every leaf on a baby plant, leaving only the lonesome stem of the plant sticking out of the ground, if you don't bother it, more leaves will come. 

These three plants will be the first ones to give us tomatoes to eat.  The two on the right are Celebrity Plus, and the one on the left is called Super Fantastic.

And these will be one of the last ones to give us tomatoes:

They won't likely have anything to harvest until sometime in August.  No matter; at least I'll know which ones fit in best next year.

We had creamed new potatoes and peas from the garden yesterday, and I have beets ready to eat.  We had several rounds of spinach before it started to bolt.  I've started preparing the new strawberry patch and already got rid of the patch we ate from this year.

My boysenberries are coming on strong, and I may have enough for a pie this week, if I can manage to stop eating every ripe one I see while I'm in the garden.  Boysenberries taste a lot like raspberries, although you won't find them in the grocery store because they are too soft to travel.

So there you have it.  I wouldn't know what to do with myself if it weren't for my garden.

Here's three and a half hours I'll never get back

I have noticed for a while that I "talk" better when I'm writing (or typing) than I actually talk out loud.  Obviously, when I'm writing the words, I have lots of time to get things right,with nobody watching or hearing.  When I blog, I have the internet to find the right word and then change things accordingly.  Just above, I tried several way to spell "obviously" and never got close to getting it right.  After trying three or four times, I used autocorrect to get it right.  Even then, I couldn't think what the word autocorrect was, so I asked Google this question:  "Why does my cell phone sometimes change a word?"

I could go on, but you get the picture.  If I want to have a conversation with someone, I can't say, "Just a minute, I'll get my computer."  

Last week Cliff helped me put new strings on my guitar.  I got them all tuned up and started to sing "Bobby McGee" and couldn't even remember the first line.  It is my favorite song to sing, and relatives know it's "my song".  It's one of the few songs I could sing without lyrics nearby.  When my grandaughter Monica was four years old or so, she was going somewhere with her dad; he had his radio on and Janis Joplin came on singing Bobby McGee; Monica said to her dad, "Why is that woman singing Grandma's song?"

I couldn't believe I've forgotten that song I'd sang so often.  I did google the lyrics and tried to sing it, but even then I made a mess of it.

So this morning I got a thought:  Maybe if I start writing the words, one line will lead to another?  Thank goodness I did manage to remember the first line.  And sure enough, I eventually got all of it without looking it up.  A couple of times I couldn't remember a word or line, so I'd leave space for it and go to the next line, which I remembered.  Sure enough, I got every word of it without looking up the lyrics.  

To make it harder, I was writing those words with my left hand.  Some of you may remember during the Covid years I learned to write with my left hand (barely).  I mostly abandoned the idea, and you're lucky if you can read it because it's the worst penmanship you will ever see, but here it is.

  And then, without reading the lyrics at all, I sang the whole song.  

I'm just glad to be here

When I started telling people I had dementia of some kind or other, I have seen several ways people respond.  In the beginning, all the older folks would tell me, "Oh, I forget things all the time; that's just normal."

They don't say that now.  I have days when I can't remember many common words, and names of people are almost out of the question.  They see it now.  Many folks say, "Oh, no!!" when I tell them.  Before Cliff took me to Church yesterday, I told him I had better not do much talking to people when I got there, because words weren't coming to me very well; some days are better than others.  

One relative said to me, "What a terrible thing to have happen!"

But here at home, I'm in my garden a lot, which is where I love to be.  I'm still reading books, although perhaps not as much as I did.  I am letting my husband help me out when we go shopping, because I can't be trusted to deal with money.  I tried using a credit card to pay for groceries, but last week when we came home, I couldn't find the card I had used to pay for groceries.  I still play Wordle, but I don't put it on Facebook any more because I often can't think of any words.

I am, for the most part, just living one day at a time and not worrying about the future.  Why should I let the end of my life get me down when I have had almost eighty years of doing whatever I wanted to do?  I've had a great run!  

I don't want to hurt anyone these days, and if I want to tell someone how much I appreciate them, I do so.  I have apologized here and there for things I have said and done.  I am now able to talk about Jesus even though others think he's a hoax, while still knowing that their beliefs seem as real to them as mine are to me.  I just thank God I am capable of believing.  

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things.  Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."  Matthew 6:34

And yes, I am still, in this moment, just glad to be here.  I can hardly wait for the green beans from the garden that I'll have in perhaps two weeks.  I'm looking forward to baby goats that will be born in late September and early October.  I'm hoping against hope that the storm we are supposed to get tomorrow will actually come and soak my poor garden.

Life is still good.