new and improved

When you fix old stuff around the home, often you're in for an upgrade. We need a new thermostat in the farmhouse. The new one will be fantastic! (Well, at least it will look more fantastic than the old one, which already was pretty cool.) When I sold my ancient car and bought a new one, the improvements on the new one were epic! New eye lens? Better than the old ones!

The same cannot be said of knees, I hear. My doc told me that one fifth of patients are totally dissatisfied with their new knees and that's because they expect the replacement to be so good that it's as if you got a new car working your joints for you! At best, he told me, you can expect less pain, though also less flexibility. So I bent my leg at the knee fully today many times knowing that this would likely be the last time I am able to do so. For the heck of it -- bend, straighten. Bend, straighten.

But honestly, I did not pause for much this morning just because of that very brief window of opportunity that was granted to me by virtue of the late morning scheduling for my hospital stay. 

Very early in the morning I rush. To feed the animals. 

(still empty tubs...)

Then I make myself a cup of  coffee (Columbian Arabica because it has red fruit flavor notes and I'm missing my bowl of fruits today!) and tea (Patagonia super berry because it has super duper healing powers. They say...). That is all I can have today.

And then, gloriously,  I get to it! Ed helps me transfer the flower baskets to the porch and the flats of annuals to the picnic table and I begin! I have 2.5 hours to do my work!

(Was there frost last night? Yes there was! It all melts by 8 a.m.)

(baskets, finally on the porch!)

And I get it all done! Tubs are rather minimalist: most have just two or three annuals, but they will expand in size and besides, I can add stuff later. I do put in a pot of just alyssum, because I know the chickens love it so and sure enough, within minutes, they're munching away. By the morning's end, the flowers will be mostly chomped off.

I also plant some creeping vines and I bring out the overwintered pots of (rather spindly for now) impatients. Finally, the farmette landscape is looking colorful and grand! (Please please please let this have been the final frost for the season!)

No ambitious photos though. I have to load everything onto blogger quickly! And I still have to scrub down and get my stuff in the car and drive over (with Ed) for my 11:30 check in.

Later:

Ed drops me at the hospital, I wave good bye and settle in to wait in the lobby. I see a tiny ant crawling up my arm. Oops. Must be from gardening. But there's another. On my purse. And another, in my purse. Oh boy. The farmhouse ants are looking for a nest home. Have they found one in my purse? 

The nurse comes to get me, I'm frantically picking out the last of the ants and taking out the caramel in the bag, which is what first caught their fancy. Can we start off with finding a garbage can?? 

In all, the wait isn't long. In fact, the nurse tells me I'll meet with my doc then my anesthesiologist soon because the doc is running ahead of schedule. Ahead of schedule?!? And the name of my robot, the one doing the actual replacement is Cinnamon. 

Later:

I'm in my room, in that wonderful dozy state of half sleep, completely mollified by medication and a superbly attentive staff. I have a view onto a forest and they say by evening deer will come to graze here. 

The surgery (they say because I surely do not remember any of it) went well. Now will come the hard paint of managing a new knee. But that's for another day, another week. For now, I am starving for my supper, and still dreamy-woozey, and so very grateful!

with love...