Tuesday

If ever you need a reason to keep yourself in good shape, I'll offer this: recoveries from anything -- surgeries, illnesses, you name it -- are going to be less of a slog and a grind for you down the road when stuff starts to fall apart if your muscles and ligaments are in good working order. The caveat is that they'll be better, but they wont be the same as they were when your muscle tone and your immune response was that of a gawky adolescent. I remember when my stomach was cut up back when I was 20. I begged my doc to let me go work on a farm in Finland a month later. He shrugged and said -- sure. I would not say the same if you were 50 years older, but at your age -- go for it!

Well now I'm fifty years older and it's been a month since y knee replacement and I am still slogging along with an ice pack machine and moving around at a small percentage of my previous pace. Nonetheless, Ed reminds me today -- look how good your progress is! And I retort -- but I'm still on the ice machine and the nights are a mess and I'm not doing jumping jacks (or some such nonsense)! 

In other words -- I'm glad that it's all going well, but I can tell by this morning -- I'm not done with naps yet!

It's hot outside. We hit 91F (nearly 33C) on our shady porch. And dry, forever and ever into the future. My flower fields are okay for now, but Ed is up very early to finish planting the tomatoes -- it's too toasty warm to sit out in a sunny field at midday. 

I myself do minimal work outside. A few weeds, water for the tubs, that's it. Indeed, my big activity is a chase around the porch where one of the cats deposited a live chipmunk. My goal was to free the guy, but the cat got to him first and carried him away probably for consumption somewhere away from the mean human that is striving to rid him of his prize.

Breakfast is on the porch. I bring out the fan to cool Ed down after his work in the fields.

(Ed does not get rid of well used clothes!)

And then I work on catch up mail, on a long overdue photo book project, on napping. Inside. Until it's time to pick up Snowdrop.

She has softball practice this evening so our time together isn't long, but as always, it's splendidly lovely.

The girl has taken to loving skirts this spring and though I try to be the kind of grandparent who doesn't care about a child's appearance, it sure is lovely to see her gain confidence in her own style, her choice of colors, her determination to keep her hair "as long as possible!"

In the evening, Ed goes back to his planting, finishing up the great tomato project for now, while I take slow walks in the neighborhood. May and June evenings are so delicious, so refreshingly calm after a hot day! What's there not to love!