I was thinking how much I admire people whose lives have been turned upside down by the pandemic, who have lost so much, who work so hard and yet, when you listen to them, you'd hardly know it. They don't hide their troubles, but nor do they sink under their weight. They soldier on.
One such person is my doc, whom I visit with (remotely) every few months over small things that require such communication. We always chat a bit afterwards and I get an update on how things are going for her. She is hospital staff over at UW and thus has quite a lot of CoVid stuff on her plate. She also has a small child at home and a husband who is in the health care field as well. I mean, how does she keep that smile going?
It's not fair to expect such bravery from most of us mere mortals. You cannot develop good cheer suddenly, in a pandemic no less. My doc was probably born smiling. (She has had a tough life, but somehow she shrugs it off and points to all the good things that came her way.) Still, if you're looking for heroes, look no further than the person who can still crack a smile at the end of a terrible day.
* * *
Recently, Snowdrop and I (and Sparrow to an extent) have been reading and rereading the Tales from Deckawoo Drive. They're deceptively easy books -- meaning a young child will like them, though an older person will pick up a hell of a lot more from the text. In one of them (my favorite -- "Stella Endicott and the Anything-Is-Possible Poem"), a young girl gets herself sent to the principal's office -- a guy with a scary reputation. And if this isn't bad enough, she is accidentally locked in with an annoying boy in a janitor's closet. She has this ready phrase that gets her through tricky situations -- courage and curiosity. I smiled at that. It reminded me how at the beginning of the pandemic I thought you needed good words to get you going when you woke up in the morning. (This was before I even read the Stella Endicott book.) I had picked courage and joy. Stella (the little girl in the book) and I have at least one word in common.
* * *
As I left the house to feed the animals, I worried that the cats would all be mauled and mangled. There was some ferocious cat screeching outside our window last night. I thought maybe an owl attacked a cat or two. Ed was inclined to believe that the big cats were asserting themselves before the two little ones.
The big cats seemed fine. One of the young ones was missing, but that happens.
My second thought was on the flowers: if the mosquitoes and horse flies are in high gear right now, does that mean that I will never see some of the day lily blooms? I mean, they're only here for a day. But pausing to admire them is tough when you're under a bug attack. These few photos were taken at a price!
Until we get the mosquito population down a bit, I need another solution. How about cutting off some less visible stems and bringing them inside?
This is how we managed to have a very lovely porch breakfast. The lily blooms will last only a day even in a vase, but the other buds will open up. So what you see today is not what you'll see tomorrow!
* * *
What to do when the kids arrive! Nature hike? No way! As I spray them with the ineffective "natural" anti-mosquito stuff, I consider our very limited possibilities. Sparrow just wants to see the chickens. Snowdrop proposes that we do some gardening. In sticking to the courtyard and handing over the hose with instructions on how to control the water flow, and by issuing my loud cheeper call, I satisfy both.
My one regret is that I can't really give the girl free reign with the hose. I would have loved to just let her spray everyone and everything in sight (it's another hot and humid day), but Sparrow is scared of the seemingly out-of-control hose spray and, too, I have a camera around my neck. Still, we all get our share of water!
(Adding some to the cheeper water dish...)
* * *
I have no idea where Snowdrop gets her pretend ideas. We'd been reading the Deckawoo books, which, it is true, implicitly promote an adventurous spirit, but surely this is not why, after our reading time, Snowdrop announces: let's pretend we are explorers!
There are props. I get mine, Sparrow gets his. Dutifully, he does what may to some appear as exploration.
Snowdrop finds injured animals. Ed is charged with curing them. I fight off dangerous lions with a wooden spoon.
* * *
Remember how last year I snipped spent lily heads every single day? On July 23rd, I broke the all time record in lily snipping -- I knocked off over 1000 spent blossoms. It took more than two hours to clear that much and I did it before breakfast. But this year is different. In so many ways! In all ways! Whereas last year I had the kids here in the afternoon, after school, this year I have them in the morning. It's gaga's summer school after all! So time is precious in the early hours. But even if I had the time to snip away then, I wouldn't do it: it's too buggy out there and it is especially buggy in the mornings. Last year, we were spraying garlic and rosemary oils by now. This year we held back.
All this to say that in the afternoon, Ed gently suggested that I go out into my gardens. I had a lot of difficult phone calls to work through. I was spent. So I went outside and I ignored the bugs and I snipped lilies, which felt almost as if last year was this year and things hadn't changed all that much after all.
Here's a pairing I love: a day lily with daisies.
And this is how a big part of the Big Bed looks like now:
* * *
My weekly grocery supplement was scheduled to be delivered this evening. Well now, the skies darkened, the warnings came on, the lightening flashed again and again, the rain came down.
The groceries got wet. But not too wet -- I sent Ed out to get them. I told him to be careful. We were, after all, under a storm warning. He took the time to once again look up and show me the number of lightening deaths in Wisconsin. Just about anything will kill you before lightening does.
Indeed, lightening did not kill him.
* * *
Sometime in the middle of all that rain, Primrose calls from Chicago. She is having supper. I am fixing supper. We compare foods. I show her a little froggie that's climbing up the window screen outside. She shows me all the green foods on her plate.
The world of children is so pure and noble! They laugh when you laugh. They inevitably wish you would laugh more. We're all working on it, little ones! We're all working on it!
One such person is my doc, whom I visit with (remotely) every few months over small things that require such communication. We always chat a bit afterwards and I get an update on how things are going for her. She is hospital staff over at UW and thus has quite a lot of CoVid stuff on her plate. She also has a small child at home and a husband who is in the health care field as well. I mean, how does she keep that smile going?
It's not fair to expect such bravery from most of us mere mortals. You cannot develop good cheer suddenly, in a pandemic no less. My doc was probably born smiling. (She has had a tough life, but somehow she shrugs it off and points to all the good things that came her way.) Still, if you're looking for heroes, look no further than the person who can still crack a smile at the end of a terrible day.
* * *
Recently, Snowdrop and I (and Sparrow to an extent) have been reading and rereading the Tales from Deckawoo Drive. They're deceptively easy books -- meaning a young child will like them, though an older person will pick up a hell of a lot more from the text. In one of them (my favorite -- "Stella Endicott and the Anything-Is-Possible Poem"), a young girl gets herself sent to the principal's office -- a guy with a scary reputation. And if this isn't bad enough, she is accidentally locked in with an annoying boy in a janitor's closet. She has this ready phrase that gets her through tricky situations -- courage and curiosity. I smiled at that. It reminded me how at the beginning of the pandemic I thought you needed good words to get you going when you woke up in the morning. (This was before I even read the Stella Endicott book.) I had picked courage and joy. Stella (the little girl in the book) and I have at least one word in common.
* * *
As I left the house to feed the animals, I worried that the cats would all be mauled and mangled. There was some ferocious cat screeching outside our window last night. I thought maybe an owl attacked a cat or two. Ed was inclined to believe that the big cats were asserting themselves before the two little ones.
The big cats seemed fine. One of the young ones was missing, but that happens.
My second thought was on the flowers: if the mosquitoes and horse flies are in high gear right now, does that mean that I will never see some of the day lily blooms? I mean, they're only here for a day. But pausing to admire them is tough when you're under a bug attack. These few photos were taken at a price!
Until we get the mosquito population down a bit, I need another solution. How about cutting off some less visible stems and bringing them inside?
This is how we managed to have a very lovely porch breakfast. The lily blooms will last only a day even in a vase, but the other buds will open up. So what you see today is not what you'll see tomorrow!
* * *
What to do when the kids arrive! Nature hike? No way! As I spray them with the ineffective "natural" anti-mosquito stuff, I consider our very limited possibilities. Sparrow just wants to see the chickens. Snowdrop proposes that we do some gardening. In sticking to the courtyard and handing over the hose with instructions on how to control the water flow, and by issuing my loud cheeper call, I satisfy both.
My one regret is that I can't really give the girl free reign with the hose. I would have loved to just let her spray everyone and everything in sight (it's another hot and humid day), but Sparrow is scared of the seemingly out-of-control hose spray and, too, I have a camera around my neck. Still, we all get our share of water!
(Adding some to the cheeper water dish...)
* * *
I have no idea where Snowdrop gets her pretend ideas. We'd been reading the Deckawoo books, which, it is true, implicitly promote an adventurous spirit, but surely this is not why, after our reading time, Snowdrop announces: let's pretend we are explorers!
There are props. I get mine, Sparrow gets his. Dutifully, he does what may to some appear as exploration.
Snowdrop finds injured animals. Ed is charged with curing them. I fight off dangerous lions with a wooden spoon.
* * *
Remember how last year I snipped spent lily heads every single day? On July 23rd, I broke the all time record in lily snipping -- I knocked off over 1000 spent blossoms. It took more than two hours to clear that much and I did it before breakfast. But this year is different. In so many ways! In all ways! Whereas last year I had the kids here in the afternoon, after school, this year I have them in the morning. It's gaga's summer school after all! So time is precious in the early hours. But even if I had the time to snip away then, I wouldn't do it: it's too buggy out there and it is especially buggy in the mornings. Last year, we were spraying garlic and rosemary oils by now. This year we held back.
All this to say that in the afternoon, Ed gently suggested that I go out into my gardens. I had a lot of difficult phone calls to work through. I was spent. So I went outside and I ignored the bugs and I snipped lilies, which felt almost as if last year was this year and things hadn't changed all that much after all.
Here's a pairing I love: a day lily with daisies.
And this is how a big part of the Big Bed looks like now:
* * *
My weekly grocery supplement was scheduled to be delivered this evening. Well now, the skies darkened, the warnings came on, the lightening flashed again and again, the rain came down.
The groceries got wet. But not too wet -- I sent Ed out to get them. I told him to be careful. We were, after all, under a storm warning. He took the time to once again look up and show me the number of lightening deaths in Wisconsin. Just about anything will kill you before lightening does.
Indeed, lightening did not kill him.
* * *
Sometime in the middle of all that rain, Primrose calls from Chicago. She is having supper. I am fixing supper. We compare foods. I show her a little froggie that's climbing up the window screen outside. She shows me all the green foods on her plate.
The world of children is so pure and noble! They laugh when you laugh. They inevitably wish you would laugh more. We're all working on it, little ones! We're all working on it!
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