Spring has sprung
G'day all!
I am a very bad blogger, but you know that already...
This early Spring has been wonderful. Some things that have happened have been less wonderful - losing Leonard Nimoy and then Sir Terry and then Malcolm Fraser (ex-Prime Minister of Oz and someone who had stood up for his humanitarian principles for the last 40-odd years) and the Germanwings disaster...
But the flowers and the weather have provided nice little pep-me-ups along the way, even if we got to equinox and the weather got worse not better! Still we need a bit of rain and a bit of gloom to remind us how glorious it is here.
I've been making a bit. I've been working. I've been slacking in the garden, then slaving in the garden. It is starting to come together.
Two weekends ago we went to the local African Violet society show and sale. The sale was better than the show but never mind! I'm just used to the insanity of the "Early Morn" African Violet group in my home city. Their plants are just amazing - people who grow for show are a dedicated breed! But we came home with some lovely little plants and lots of Streptocarpus varieties. We now have even more plants in the house - the only room without a plant at the moment is the bathroom - I might move a couple of orchids back in there... Even the laundry has plants in it!
Last weekend we went to the Spring grafting festival organised by the local tree fruit society. We learned how to do a simple splice graft, where you cut the rootstock and the scion on an angle and mate them up, trying to keep as much cambium (the juicy vascular part under the bark) in contact as possible. Then you wrap the graft up with tape, tightly, and wait to see if the graft takes. We did a bunch of semi-dwarf apple trees with some interesting varieties of apple (okay, ones that I like cos DH was not expressing an opinion plus some I thought sounded good like an unnamed variety from a tree on Vashon Island). We came home with six little apple trees and two quinces, total cost something like $16. I have no idea how long it will take for us to see if the plants have taken or if they will even take but I keep dancing out to the front yard to check them. (I have plans for them to become something like a Belgian Fence.)
I have to admit I've been busy avoiding things too. I'm not going to go into them on the blog, but I have to say it was more of an unpleasant surprise than I would like and now I have another set of regular tests that I have to undertake. Yay me, I have to have breast cancer screening (that's happening at the end of the week), bowel cancer screening (every five years), melanoma screening (every year) and pancreatic cancer screening (every year, some time in earlyish May). Plus I have to watch for "bowel habit changes" and stomach pains, and with me that happens every time the wind changes. Oh joy oh bliss.
It is a pity that my body looks reasonably good but is actually pretty screwed up genetically. I keep thanking pitchforks and pointy ears that I never had kids because passing all this crud onto them would be horrible. But for the nonce I am reasonably healthy and long may I stay that way (or better!).
It is interesting to see the things that trip me up. Health issues are an obvious one. People often say that I seem to have a very good attitude regarding cancer.
If a good attitude means ignoring it as much as possible, well yes, yes I do. Not much I can do apart from try to look after myself and get regular screening. It is the only way I can function. If I start looking at Dr Google then I melt down into a quivering mess. So I blithely ignore the internet on such subjects and keep on cruising on my own special plane.
Today DH got cranky with me because I "was not walking fast enough." We were strolling through a fairly wild park and I keep stopping to take photos because the leaves are bursting out and it is becoming even greener (moss keeps things green here in winter even when the deciduous trees have lost their leaves), plus I cannot walk fast even now due to this weird voice/throat thing. Turns out that "not fast enough" is one of my buttons and DH mashed it good and proper. I offered him the car keys so that he could hurry back whilst I moseyed, but he refused them at first. then finally took them and ran off.
"Not fast enough", "not quick enough", "not big enough" tie into my role as baby sister. I was never enough, always holding my family back because there's no way someone with a five year gap to the next sibling and a much bigger gap to their eldest siblings is ever going to keep up unless they are carried or otherwise transported. Of course DH was the eldest and never had to deal with this version of "enough" (though he has his own bogles about "enough"). Anyway, it seems that not enough is still triggery for me. Weird, huh, how early habits can carry through your life?
It took me a while to get my composure back, though if you plonk me in the middle of nature, even a suburban park, I will regain it, possibly more quickly than in any other situation, I kept plodding along, admiring the greenness and the little creek that I was following.
By the time I reached the end of the trail and had the car in my sights, DH appeared from the other direction, bearing apple juice. He apologised for being cranky with me and things were okay again.
Tonight we went to a friend's "hooray I quit my job and I'm going back to uni" party, and I went for another stroll, mostly because I needed to walk off two meat patties and a fair amount of pulled chicken. They live near Green Lake and I've often wanted to walk around there in the late afternoon/early evening.
So that is a quick round up of the last few weeks. I will soon have another quilt done and TWO knitting projects (both shawls, both need blocking). But first I have to help DH move an absolute mountain of vegie patch mix/mulch we got for the back yard. It turns out that 8 yards of the stuff is a LOT! I had to go buy a wheelbarrow (which I'd been thinking of doing for ages anyway but this pressed the point!).
anon!
I am a very bad blogger, but you know that already...
This early Spring has been wonderful. Some things that have happened have been less wonderful - losing Leonard Nimoy and then Sir Terry and then Malcolm Fraser (ex-Prime Minister of Oz and someone who had stood up for his humanitarian principles for the last 40-odd years) and the Germanwings disaster...
 |
| Mm, gluten and dairy-free "pizza". Why yes, there is only half of it left. The rest was in my belly, and that second half soon joined the first... |
 |
| Green trees! A miracle! |
But the flowers and the weather have provided nice little pep-me-ups along the way, even if we got to equinox and the weather got worse not better! Still we need a bit of rain and a bit of gloom to remind us how glorious it is here.
I've been making a bit. I've been working. I've been slacking in the garden, then slaving in the garden. It is starting to come together.
 |
| These showed up a day after I said that I still had the dogwoods to look forward to... |
Two weekends ago we went to the local African Violet society show and sale. The sale was better than the show but never mind! I'm just used to the insanity of the "Early Morn" African Violet group in my home city. Their plants are just amazing - people who grow for show are a dedicated breed! But we came home with some lovely little plants and lots of Streptocarpus varieties. We now have even more plants in the house - the only room without a plant at the moment is the bathroom - I might move a couple of orchids back in there... Even the laundry has plants in it!
 |
| These are in my yard! |
Last weekend we went to the Spring grafting festival organised by the local tree fruit society. We learned how to do a simple splice graft, where you cut the rootstock and the scion on an angle and mate them up, trying to keep as much cambium (the juicy vascular part under the bark) in contact as possible. Then you wrap the graft up with tape, tightly, and wait to see if the graft takes. We did a bunch of semi-dwarf apple trees with some interesting varieties of apple (okay, ones that I like cos DH was not expressing an opinion plus some I thought sounded good like an unnamed variety from a tree on Vashon Island). We came home with six little apple trees and two quinces, total cost something like $16. I have no idea how long it will take for us to see if the plants have taken or if they will even take but I keep dancing out to the front yard to check them. (I have plans for them to become something like a Belgian Fence.)
 |
| Not in our yard but still pretty! |
I have to admit I've been busy avoiding things too. I'm not going to go into them on the blog, but I have to say it was more of an unpleasant surprise than I would like and now I have another set of regular tests that I have to undertake. Yay me, I have to have breast cancer screening (that's happening at the end of the week), bowel cancer screening (every five years), melanoma screening (every year) and pancreatic cancer screening (every year, some time in earlyish May). Plus I have to watch for "bowel habit changes" and stomach pains, and with me that happens every time the wind changes. Oh joy oh bliss.
 |
| Yoshino cherry trees in bloom. |
 |
| Love this street when the cherries are in bloom |
It is a pity that my body looks reasonably good but is actually pretty screwed up genetically. I keep thanking pitchforks and pointy ears that I never had kids because passing all this crud onto them would be horrible. But for the nonce I am reasonably healthy and long may I stay that way (or better!).
 |
| Different Japanese ornamental cherries |
 |
| And back to the Yoshino cherries. Ahh.... |
It is interesting to see the things that trip me up. Health issues are an obvious one. People often say that I seem to have a very good attitude regarding cancer.
If a good attitude means ignoring it as much as possible, well yes, yes I do. Not much I can do apart from try to look after myself and get regular screening. It is the only way I can function. If I start looking at Dr Google then I melt down into a quivering mess. So I blithely ignore the internet on such subjects and keep on cruising on my own special plane.
 |
| Piper's Creek |
Today DH got cranky with me because I "was not walking fast enough." We were strolling through a fairly wild park and I keep stopping to take photos because the leaves are bursting out and it is becoming even greener (moss keeps things green here in winter even when the deciduous trees have lost their leaves), plus I cannot walk fast even now due to this weird voice/throat thing. Turns out that "not fast enough" is one of my buttons and DH mashed it good and proper. I offered him the car keys so that he could hurry back whilst I moseyed, but he refused them at first. then finally took them and ran off.
 |
| Mossy mosses |
"Not fast enough", "not quick enough", "not big enough" tie into my role as baby sister. I was never enough, always holding my family back because there's no way someone with a five year gap to the next sibling and a much bigger gap to their eldest siblings is ever going to keep up unless they are carried or otherwise transported. Of course DH was the eldest and never had to deal with this version of "enough" (though he has his own bogles about "enough"). Anyway, it seems that not enough is still triggery for me. Weird, huh, how early habits can carry through your life?
 |
| Green greenness. |
It took me a while to get my composure back, though if you plonk me in the middle of nature, even a suburban park, I will regain it, possibly more quickly than in any other situation, I kept plodding along, admiring the greenness and the little creek that I was following.
 |
| Salmonberry, Rubus spectabilis |
By the time I reached the end of the trail and had the car in my sights, DH appeared from the other direction, bearing apple juice. He apologised for being cranky with me and things were okay again.
Tonight we went to a friend's "hooray I quit my job and I'm going back to uni" party, and I went for another stroll, mostly because I needed to walk off two meat patties and a fair amount of pulled chicken. They live near Green Lake and I've often wanted to walk around there in the late afternoon/early evening.
 |
| Green Lake at dusk |
So that is a quick round up of the last few weeks. I will soon have another quilt done and TWO knitting projects (both shawls, both need blocking). But first I have to help DH move an absolute mountain of vegie patch mix/mulch we got for the back yard. It turns out that 8 yards of the stuff is a LOT! I had to go buy a wheelbarrow (which I'd been thinking of doing for ages anyway but this pressed the point!).
anon!
I'm quite happy that you mosey along and take such wonderful nature photos for us to see. How interesting about the Enough stuff coming from your childhood, it's great that you have realised that rather than it just being something that sets you off and you don't know why. I'm happy it was all okay in the end. I love the sound of all those apple and quince trees, your very own litte orchard.
ReplyDeleteI've been a bad blogger, too, Lynne, though I'm trying to tiptoe back into it a bit. So love the gorgeous photos you share on your blog.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear about the ongoing health issues. I think you handle these roadblocks in just the best way possible, and I'm sending every good thought that the coming year will be an excellent one for you!
We are settling in at our new condo in Glen Ellen (Sonoma County) and enjoying the stunning beauty of the area. Back to Oz on 22 April for a couple of months, and back up here in late June. All the back and forth is a bit much, but that's the way things need to be for the present. Ross's Mum is doing well at 93, but does have a few health issues that mean we need to be there regularly.
Cheers from here!