Sunday 8 May 2022

Recovered

I’ve returned from my 3-month post-surgery checkup last Monday. Everything is entirely positive. Even though I went into the appointment with considerable optimism, the relief I feel suggests that there were still some niggling doubts. It is also true that I’ve been looking at this checkup as — at least it was positive — as a sort of milestone. So I am going to stop talking about my “recovery,” and declare myself “recovered.”

Onward

During this period I feel that I’ve been a bit myopic — at first I focused on the diagnosis, and then on arranging the treatment, and then on upcoming operation, and then on my week by week progress in healing and recovering my conditioning.

Garden Fantasies

Spring – the version of it that is sunny, balmy, and filled with buds and early flowers – arrived yesterday. Well, the buds and flowers had made some earlier cautious forays out into the world, but yesterday was the day that found all those inclined towards gardening out and about. I spent the day cleaning up the porch, yard and garage to ready them for a new season of use. I pruned some branches damaged by the snow, seeded some bare areas with grass, figured out which combinations of hoses and nozzles would not give me spontaneous showers when turned on, and set out grids for the fast-emerging peonies. And so on. I spent eight or nine hours in the yard, all told, and ended the day when that pleasant enervation that follows a bout of hard work.

The next morning was a little less pleasant, as various muscles complained about over use. In particular, my left achilles tendon, which I’ve been trying to protect (via strengthening the appropriate ‘shock-absorbing’ muscles), was quite tender. I suspect it was the extended squatting that did it. I resolve to have a conversation with my physical therapist about it, and see whether there are other things I can do to ameliorate it, or if I should switch from squatting to kneeling.

Now the question is what to do for the coming season. Last year I focused on deeply mulching most of the beds in the yard, and that has come through the winter well, suggesting that a lot less weeding and other maintenance will be required. So where else to devoted energy?

Bird feeder and water source. Both Katie and I have been enjoying the birdsong, and have noted with pleasure the bird-friendliness of the giant arborvitae hedge on the south boundary. It would be nice to make the yard still more bird-friendly. One idea is to put out one or more bird-feeders, which have spent the last few years in the garage. Another idea if to finally provide a source of water for birds (and also for bees, wasps and other insects). A bird bath with shallow areas is one thought for that.

Back forty pond. Another possibility — and not necessarily mutually exclusive — is to put a small pond/fountain in the ‘back forty.’ I have the start at hole, thanks to excavating a volunteer mulberry seedling, and although it would be a lot of work, I am pondering enlarging the hole enough to accommodate one of the ‘small pond liners’ that one can find at garden stores. That, with a solar-powered fountain, could be a fun thing to try; in my fantasies it would attract frogs and dragon flies, though reality may prove to diverge.

A trellis along the garage. At dinner last night, we discussed taking out the gradually deteriorating kiosk and bench along the yard-facing side of the garage, perhaps including the black currents which Katie has never been fond of. In their place could be a sturdy trellis, with either flowering vines and/or espaliered fruit trees. I have talked about the latter for a long time, and if I am ever to do it… well, the time we will spend here is finite, and so if it will take a few years for the fruit trees to mature the time is probably now.

Restoration of the south garden. The south garden has suffered repeated insults during the attic renovation, due to the temporary side entrance and the contractors lugging materials and debris back and forth. I did a bit of work here last year, planting a lot of hostas, and I think it could be quite to turn it into a more diverse and nuanced shade garden: bleeding heart, blood root, ferns, hostas, and so forth.

Herb patches along the edges of the back garden. We have an ancient patch of oregano that is a decade or more old; it no longer tastes like what I think oregano tastes like, but Katie reports liking it. In any event, a new patch of oregano, and perhaps other herbs that would have a chance of over wintering (perhaps with the help of pre-winter mulching) is an attractive option.

That looks like a good summer’s work!