Good grief! I just realized how fortunate I am. I am sitting here in my easy chair, looking out through the window at the blue sky and the gently waving branches of the evergreen tree in the front yard. And what pressing matter occupies my mind? Shall I put on socks and shoes, or just go in bare feet with sandals today. This is the stuff that a good life is made of!
Right now there is a welcome lull in the heating system projects. Soon there will be tradespeople in and out of the house, day after day. So I am enjoying this quiet day.
During my last baking session over the weekend, I used up every last bit of the home milled whole grain flour. Today was flour milling day, a good day for it because the temperature outside is 34C, 41C humidex, too hot for this girl. Taking time to let the mill cool between batches makes the project a long one, but not a taxing one. By the end of the day two gallon jars of freshly milled whole wheat flour were sitting on the pantry shelf. It will be ready for tomorrow’s bread baking, and a batch of muffins, Apple Raisin Walnut Spice I think, as there is a jar of apples canned in 2018 that look like they want to delight.
The garden is doing well. Attila has been spending every spare minute getting it planted, and attempting to defend it from competitors. Rabbits! They destroyed some of the sunflowers, kohlrabi, and beans. I kept seeing them in the garden early in the morning, and have been rushing out and chasing them off, but they come back when we aren’t looking. Attila had lined the new “fence” with animal netting and thought that would keep them out. No indeed, it did not. His weekend included lining the new “fence” with chicken wire. Since it was installed there have been no more raids, no more decimated plants. Our fingers are crossed that this will keep the rabbits away from our food crops. There are plans to line the inner fence as well, before the rest of plant starts are planted there. This is the busiest time of all for Attila, planting and improving the garden infrastructure. My busy time begins in July when the harvest starts to come in from the garden.
We have hawkweed, wild strawberries, wild violets, lungwort, wild geranium, columbine, and lilac blooming at the moment, and soon the peonies will burst forth. Granny’s rose is having a wonderful summer this year, and is now taller than I am. The clematis has grown as tall as the rose, and is about to climb up the arbour and over the fence gate. The heliopsis is waist high now, and growing fast. Attila separated and transplanted two heliopsis plants and they are doing very well, I expect they will bloom this summer. The scarlet runner beans are looking robust. I have seen some large bees buzzing around the garden, and once even a humming bird.
My strawberries did not winter well, but seem to be slowly coming back. I doubt there will be much fruit though, not this year. We need straw for the strawberries, but since we have none they struggle along in the uncovered soil.
<health>
I’ve been lucky enough to find a very good physiotherapist, and have attended four appointments so far. This fellow pays attention to detail, he knows what he is doing, he is cautious with my other health concerns, but encourages me to gently move forward with the program he has iteratively devised for me. And my back pain is improving, to the point where it does not keep me awake at night, and I can forget to take a pain pill and not notice until I am uncomfortable hours and hours later. This is huge improvement!
The program he has created for me takes up about thirty minutes of my day, and it is a worthy commitment. It isn’t a comfortable thirty minutes, but neither is it a painful thirty minutes. I do not notice improvement on any given day, but over time improvement has been made.
The nausea continues anon. I was prescribed the somewhat effective but undesirable pills, Rabeprazole, a PPI. I am now managing the nausea somewhat with homemade ginger tea, which was suggested by my Nurse Practitioner, although she mentioned over the counter medication versions. My appointments with the surgeons are approaching, and hopefully they will do some tests to see what is going on with that. In the meantime I eat enough to live and be healthy, and no more. My weight is falling as one would expect under the circumstances.
An odd thing occurred as well when I began using ginger tea, I sip one cup through the day, before and after meals. The day I began drinking ginger tea my blood pressure dropped by 10 mm Hg both systolic and diastolic. This has never happened before, not even once. The next day my blood pressure dropped another 10 mm Hg, both systolic and diastolic. This was a bit frightening, I wondered how low it would go, and if my aneurysm was about to burst! And it did drop a bit more, but has remained stable at the lower readings for over a week, a little lower than what is deemed normal, but well within a healthy range. There was one exception, the day or so when coordinating the oil tank pump out, when things weren’t going as smoothly as planned, and I experienced trepidation as to the possible consequences of a small oil spill on the property. That raised my blood pressure significantly. With the success of the pump out my BP dropped back down.
I might not have noticed the change in my blood pressure, but since I have been acclimatizing myself to blood pressure readings by taking them every day, the change was noted. The drop is good news, I hope.
Note: Rabeprazole
“The most common PPIs …All participants were free of dementia at the study’s beginning. Yet, after the eight-year follow-up, chronic PPI users had a 44% increased risk of dementia compared with those who did not take any medication.”
Source: Can a heartburn drug cause cognitive problems?
</health>
Worldly
Weather
Updated on Tue, May 31, 4:15 PM
34 °C
FEELS LIKE 41
Partly cloudy
Wind 21 SW km/h
Humidity 43 %
Visibility 33 km
Sunrise 5:27 AM
Wind gust 32 km/h
Pressure 101.2 kPa
Ceiling 9100 m
Sunset 8:43 PM
Quote
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
Mahatma Gandhi
1869 – 1948
Oh, Maggie I am so sorry you have to deal with your health problems but so glad you are getting some pain relief from the therapy. I keep you in my prayers every night. How wonderful that the ginger tea reduced your blood pressure! The yellow iris is gorgeous! I have just started planting a few flowers around the yard. I, too, have rabbits but I’m not growing any food so I don’t mind them. I find them fun to watch and had a little one doing zoomies around my yard yesterday. Take care and hope you continue to get less and less pain.
Thank you Eileen, for your kind thoughts and prayers. The ginger is a pleasant discovery, so far so good with it. The iris plant was in our front yard when we bought Mist Cottage, and it was transplanted to a sunnier location in the back yard, where it is very happy. Rabbits are very cute, ours are cottontails, and I enjoy watching them cavort outside the garden fence. Since we put up the chicken wire they haven’t come back though, but it is just a matter of time I think before they find things outside the fence they like to eat, which is fine. Enjoy your flowers!
Hi Maggie. I’m glad the physiotherapist is helping with your pain. I hope you’ll get more help when you see the surgeons. This is an article that has a brief section on the blood pressure benefits of Ginger Tea https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/ginger-tea-side-effects#bottom-line I also read that ginger tea can help with nausea. It sounds like you and Attila will be enjoying another wonderful season of vegetable gardening! And I love hearing about your Granny’s rose!
Hi Sandy. The physiotherapist is excellent. I went to the same clinic when I tore the meniscus in my knee, years ago now, and the exercises I was given worked slowly but surely. I still do one of the knee exercises when necessary. I am hoping the surgeons have something to offer me, I will have waited over six months to see them!
Thank your for the link, what a great article. So far the ginger tea has moderated my nausea, and lowered my blood pressure. I am looking forward to my next blood test to see if it has affected cholesterol and triglyceride levels, fingers crossed.
Every year our garden gets a little bit more organized. Attila loves to experiment with his plants, he watches and fusses over them every day. I leave the garden to him mostly, because it is truly his happy place, where he does what he wants, when he wants. I think everyone needs a time and place where they can do what they want, when they want, and the garden is his place. It is good for physical, emotional, and mental health, and it has so many other benefits as well, with all the wonderful food that comes from Attila’s labours.
Granny’s Rose is a source of real joy, I know that it is happy here with us, and when I look at it I think of the corner of Granny’s garden where it grew.
A good therapist is worth his/her weight in gold. I’m so glad to hear you are getting results. -Kate
I’m glad to hear you’re seeing some benefits from the chsnges you’re making, Maggie. When we’ve gone on cruises, the crew always recommends eating green apples like Granny Smith for nausea, even over ginger.
Rabbits are quite the troublemakers, in a garden. I remember sitting on the deck at the old house a few years ago and seeing a normal sized rabbit jump our 4 ft chain link fence from a stsndstill!
Kate, you are so right, I am very lucky to have inadvertantly bumped into this physiotherapist! I probably won’t be seeing him long, but the program he has setup just for me will be something that becomes part of my everyday life.
Teri, thanks for your kind thoughts! That is interesting about green apples, I will look into that. I eat an apple every morning, but I don’t choose the variety as we shop online and the budget only allows the imperfect apples, and seldom do I receive the same variety two orders in a row. Still, something to think about, and research.
That is horrifying, that a rabbit jumped a four food fence. So far our rabbit competitors aren’t jumping. There aren’t many fences for them to jump over here, as without the chicken wire they can walk right through a chain link fence, one did this morning. Attila has more fence work to do! Hopefully the rabbits here never learn the art of fence jumping!
Beautiful irises! I’m glad you’re getting some pain relief.
Thanks Joan! It is wonderful to be able to sleep through the night again, still feeling it but not enough to keep me awake all night!