Monday

The beginning of a new week offers a chance to take stock and make tweaks and adjustments where needed. Get yourself on a better path! This can be a challenge when the air outside is misty (probably from the forest fires up north), cool, but stubbornly rain-free. Don't think about the watering that you'll need to get through in the days ahead! Think of how good it is that we at least do not also have a water shortage! 

The walk to the barn is calm. 

(Some Clematis flowers bloom in June, others in July. This summer one is just starting to flower now.)

I do some spot weeding and I check on the meadows. The grasses are threatening to outcompete some of the meadow flowers, but I know that things may change yet. It's still pretty out there, underneath the apple and pear trees.

Breakfast is in the kitchen and it's oatmeal. The cats join us. On the upside, I finally managed to trim Ed's beard so that he no longer looks like a wild person who has just stumbled onto civilization.

I then had an appointment with David, my PT chief. I asked him if there will come a day when I do not once think about shifting around in the constant search for a comfortable position with my transformed leg. And again I got the dissertation on a therapeutic window. Be sure to let the tissues heal in-between bouts of exercise! Okay okay okay...

On the upside, the leg is now almost completely straight and the bend is at 128 degrees, which is 3 degrees more than the average post surgical maximum bend. Which is good, because as you know, I am competitive. 

As to the aches and pains, David treated me to a session with his TENS Nerve Stimulator and suggested that I acquire one. Have you ever heard of it? I hadn't. You attach electrodes to your knee and your nerves stop transmitting pain and instead transmit only this buzzing sensation. Apparently your nerves are not good at multitasking -- a buzz replaces post surgical pain. Sounds good to me! 

And now I go home, fitting in some spot watering before it's time for me to pick up Snowdrop. What can I say -- we got no rain yesterday, or today and we will get no rain tomorrow. Our friend went canoeing on the Wisconsin River just to the north of us. Rain. Lots of rain. Here? Nothing. 

(The most colorful spot right now is probably along the Secret Path, where the Penstemon, the Heliopsis and the lavender are in bloom)

Snowdrop and I are on a farmhouse schedule again this week. The UW camp is finished and now she is in a yoga-cooking-art-improv camp (called "creative soul"). She wasn't sure she'd like it, but at drop off, she spotted three school friends in her group and so now there is no chance of a bad week. I told her that as she goes through these day camp programs (last year she did an art one, a nature one, a computer programming one, and a drama one; this year she is, of course in the yoga-etc one and she still has drama in the later part of summer), over the years she's going to get to know all the Madison kids her age, because they're all enrolled in this stuff so that they stay busy and the parents can work.

(she is part of the moon group)

(At the farmette, first order of operations is a Fraises des Bois harvest.)

Toward evening, I drop her off at home and stay for a few minutes to wrap up my catch up with my daughter. We have a tremendously full several weeks ahead of us so this is a last chance to sit down quietly and review anything and everything in life!

And as I drive home, the skies clear, the wind picks up and it feels to me to be a pretty lovely end of day. So I pull up by the B-Cycle bike rack in the new development and hop on a bike and do a spin along the quiet rural roads. And it is beautiful.

At home again, I keep my therapeutic window open and rest my leg. But first I whisper to it -- you know, you're perfectly capable of bending another couple of degrees! We'll work on it tomorrow!

with love...