Summer time (right around the corner!) is flower time around the Aerie. While there are several flowering plants out in the woods (honeysuckle, cherry, wild crab apples, etc.) there are also some around the Aerie. Besides the lilacs and rhododendron that is.
Did I not post the lilacs and rhodys?
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| (The deer took the buds on the top of this bush.) |
Being at 2100 feet on the northwest side of the mountain which continues to climb to approximately 2500 feet to our southeast, the sun doesn't get to the Aerie until an hour or more after official sunrise. Therefore, we don't get the strong, heating effects of the sun until about 2 pm. With 50% chance of rain forecast for Sunday, I decided to cut the dandelions--I mean grass this morning.
Love the self propelled walk behind mower! Hardest part of cutting the grass is setting the speed to a level I can keep up with. Still have to manhandle it around shrubs and on certain slopes, but, like I said, it's mostly just trying to keep up with the darn thing. Oh, and emptying when it gets full. When the weeds are as tall as the were this morning there;s no option but to bag the clippings. Mulching just won't do. If I can get to cut it ever seven days, then the stuff isn't too tall and I can just mulch it. Today was more like two weeks plus since I last mowed.
I took my time. I stopped frequently to empty the bag of clippings and took a water/Gator Ade break every hour. It took me close to four hours to get the job done. When I don't have to empty the bag--or take so many breaks, it takes me between two and a half and three hours.
Fitbit says I did approximately 14 thousand steps but my iPhone Health ap says it was just over 5 thousand. Either way I walked a lot!
I enjoy cutting the lawn. It's pretty much a mindless task.Just start the mower and walk along behind it. Not much to think about as the terrain of the yard sorta dictates the path pattern you can take. When I used to cut the grass up at the cabin I had a huge, square area that allowed me to cut zigzag following one side of the square or diagonally from one corner to the opposite corner. Alternating the direction you take from cutting to the next is supposed to be better for the grass. Here at the Aerie, where things are more or less terraced and contoured to the hillside, diagonal cuts are out of the question. It's mostly just back and forth along the contour.
Now I'm tired and ready for a shower, but I got'er done! That's what counts.
Another scorcher of a day today. The high was about 88 degrees and the few clouds that tried to shade us from the sun failed. Hot or not, I had to get the tomatoes and peppers in the ground.
It took me about an hour and half to plant the all and then water them using the watering can. I wanted the water to go just where I wanted it to go, something you can't depend on happening with the hose. I finished just in time for lunch.
Then I had to take Copy Cat to the vet for a followup visit. He hasn't been limping since the day after she gave him an antibiotic shot for swollen lymph nodes two weeks ago. He wasn't happy to go for a ride as he was sound asleep on his back when I went to get him and put him in the carrier. The vet said she thought his glands were not as swollen as last time (How can you tell?) but perhaps he should have another shot of antibiotic just in case. She had to re-calibrate the dosage since this sick pussy cat had gained a pound since his last visit. One pound may not sound like much to you or me, but when you only weigh 12.2 and go to 13.6.... If he doesn't start limping again, there's no need for a further visit. Copy was a little quieter on the way home. Whether that was because the truck's AC finally started cooling the inside of the truck, or because of the shot he just got is anyone's guess.
Back home I just vegged out until about 6:30 when I went out to water the plants/seeds. I can almost stop saying "seeds" since everything except the beans and lettuce--which just went in yesterday--has started popping out of the ground. The morning glories lead the way of the seeds planted. They were second to show up after the radishes, but they now stand nearly two inches high and have 1-1/4 inch seed leaves.
Time for another cold one as I tune in the Mets' game.
My left thigh is feeling real good. Whether it was the pain killer, muscle relaxant or just the rest I forced myself to take, something worked. I contacted my primary care nurse practitioner and told her about my progress. I then said I would still not be running a marathon this weekend. She reminded me that the best way to rain for a marathon was slowly increasing your endurance. Emphasis on "slowly."
If this keeps up, I'll feel fit enough to cut the grass Saturday. Why Saturday? Well another day of mostly rest can't hurt and today it got up to 87 degrees in bright, bright sunshine. Friday is supposed to be a carbon copy. Way too hot to cut grass! Though Saturday won't be much better with temps again cracking the 80 degree mark, but it will be cloudy so there's that. Definitely Summer weather.
I did do a few things today.
I went to the garden center and picked up some tomato and pepper plants along with two bags of topsoil mix that contains fertilizer. When I put the plants in (tomorrow morning?) I will dig an oversized hole and put in some of that topsoil mix.
When I came home, I did a little work on the plots where the tomatoes and peppers will go. Mostly it was just raking the areas to break the surface crust that had formed. (Have I mentioned how much clay there is in our soil.) I planted some leaf lettuce in the garden with the beans. just three short rows but , if they produce, Terry will be happy.
I also fixed a nagging little problem with some concrete edging blocks that had heaved upward and were hitting the bottom edge of the gate to that plot. I just had to remove five of them and dig the stones/earth under the center blocks and reset them. Easy, peasy.
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Terry called. Sounds like she and her sister are having a good time. The cruise ship is hopping from island to island and they're getting tours of the little towns on each one. Some tours are by small short buses and others are walking. They are halfway in the cruise around Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands.
Fun times that included seeing Terry off and two(!) trips to the emergency room at Troy Hospital.
First off, you know all that work I did last week? Well, some of it apparently came back to bite me in the left thigh. After my last post, I had terrible, rated 9 or 10, pain in the area directly above the knee and going 4 to 5 inches up. I was going to stick it out hoping things would improve since I didn't want Terry to do anything foolish and demand she stay home. But things didn't seem to improve during a near sleepless Friday night or at any time during Saturday.
Terry left around 1 o'clock and by 5 I could stand the pain any more.I decided to see if a birding friend (Ken) who lives nearby could give me a ride over to the ER in Troy. I emailed him a request since I didn't have his phone number and he called me less than 10 minutes later. I explained my situation and asked for his assistance. He said he'd be glad to help out.
Well, I got to the ER shortly after 6 pm and the doctor on call said that he thought it might be anything from a blood clot to a strain/partial tear of the quad. He was leaning toward the latter because there was not discoloration of the left foot. Unfortunately, there was no one who could do an ultrasound to determine which it was. He gave me some meds to fight any infection that might be present in the deep tissues and told me to come back in the morning.
Ken agreed to take me back on Sunday morning so I was good to go.
I got home around 10:30 and managed to get some sleep before Ken showed up at 7:30 Sunday morning for a return trip to the ER. This time, Ken came prepared and did some birding around the hospital grounds while I went to get my ultrasound done. He didn't do too badly as he spotted 13 or 14 species. I didn't do too badly either. The tech did elicit some stifled screams and visions of stars on my part when she had to press down on the tissues to get a good picture, but her work eliminated blood clots as a possibility.
The night shift doc was still there and he started talking about either a severe contusion or partial tear of the quad. (He eliminated a full tear because "your lower leg isn't flapping in the breeze.") I got the prescription for infection and a new one for pain from the day doc.
Ken took me to the CVS in Mansfield to get those meds and then delivered me home.
The pain meds warn about drowsiness and they aren't kidding. I took a nap from 5 til 7 and then went to bed around 10. (I needed to space the meds apart so forced myself to stay up.) I can't say I fell asleep immediately, but it was close. I didn't wake until 9 am. If the cats tried to get me up, I was unaware of that.
It's coming up on noon and 24 hours on these meds and I can say something is working. Whether it was the long sleep or the drugs, the pain has subsided considerably. I just booked a followup with my primary care for Tuesday afternoon. Hopefully I'll be able to tell her things are getting better and better.
This past week I spent several days working in the gardens. I used the shovel to turn them over (after having used the roto-tiller on them) and marveled at the number of earthworms each shovelful of dirt exposed. Maybe I should have gone fishing?
I made a mix of potting soil and sand and used it to fill planters for things like marigolds, beets, carrots, and radishes. I also did two planters for morning glories because, well, why not. The rest I used to top dress several of the raised beds and then planted string bean seeds in one and cucumber and zucchini seeds in another. I still have lettuce seeds to put in and then will have to go shopping for tomato and pepper plants. I think we're past the last frost.
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| The Bean Bed |
There's a row of beans on either side of the 8' cedar poles in the far end of this bed. Beans, surprisingly didn't do well here last year for some reason. In years past we were able to eat string beans twice a week (or more) and still put some in the freezer. Hopefully we'll get yields like that again this year. The near right corner will be our lettuce bed.
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| Zukes and Cukes |
This bed held cukes and zukes last year and did pretty well. I switched ends on them this year and hope for a repeat. The planter in the foreground has carrot seeds.
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| Radishes, Marigolds and Beets |
The planters are extensions of the garden that I'm trying this year. The Marigolds are there for their color as well as their reputed repellent qualities.
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| Morning Glory |
Morning Glories like to climb so I put the two planters like this one at the base of the two (unused) telephone poles. Should they start to grow well--and the deer don't eat them, I'll run some cord up the poles to help them climb.
I also decided to turnover a small bed I haven't used in a couple of years. The weeds had taken over and it just looked very unsightly. Initially I was going to plant some perennial seeds in there but, after finally reading the directions on the packets ("start seeds indoors 10 weeks before last frost") I changed my mind. I've some acorn and butternut squash and some pumpkin seeds I put in there and they can go vine all over.
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| Acorn and Butternut Squash and Pumpkin Patch |
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Terry has been getting ready for her big adventure: cruising Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands. She's (finally) going to get on the water but with her sister instead of me. The vascular surgeon put enough fear in me so that I didn't feel comfortable going on a cruise. He didn't actually say I shouldn't go, but when I told him of my concern, he didn't say I should go.
Her bags are nearly packed with only a few things currently in the wash to go. She's planning on flying out of Newark (NJ) on Sunday early in the morning. To make it easier, she'll drive into the Linden are on Saturday afternoon and stay overnight. Same on the way home. Her flight comes in late at night so she'll stay either at one of the airport hotels or somewhere in the Linden area again.
It started raining last evening and hasn't really let up since then. Oh, we've had the occasional period where it's down to a mere drizzle, but that's about it. Not many real downpours either. One thing that it has done is bring out the green in the trees. Leaves seem to be busting out all over. Except for the locusts. They are always the last to leaf out.
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Anyway, back to my bread making. The dough sat in the oven all night under a cotton dish towel.
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| The bread dough after rising about 10 hours in the cold oven. |
As you can see, it has more than doubled in volume. (I should have put a basin of water in the oven too. The surface formed a bit of a crust from drying out.)
I turned the dough out n a lightly floured surface and stretched and folded the "corners" in as I turned it 90 degrees. Four or five rotations did the trick. Then it went into a greased loaf pan and got popped into the still cold oven where it sat for a little over three hours. During that time, the dough rose again to the top of the loaf pan.
The bread was ready to bake. Terry's enchiladas went in on the bottom shelf and I turned the oven on to bake at 375 and set the timer for 60 minutes.
Forty-five minutes later the enchiladas came out for dinner. Checked the bread at 60 minutes and found the loaf to look perfect. The interior temp was around 190-200 so I took it out of the oven and turned it out onto a cooling rack.
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| Finished loaf looks delicious! |
I let it rest for an hour or so and then just had to slice into it.
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| Sliced loaf. Can you smell it? |
The loft was excellent. I forgot to slice the top to allow moisture and gases to escape. If I had done so, that gap/bubble just beneath the crust might not be there. All I can say is that it has been a couple of months since I baked bread. Mea culpa.
Terry and I enjoyed a slice each with nice soft butter and all I can say is it was yummy!
I took the rototiller and rake to the four garden plots this afternoon. (I'm trying to get the pictures of that but for whatever reason my email won't cooperate.) The idea was to get everything done before tonight's rains arrived. I managed to do that but as I finished I heard some rumbling from thunderstorms that moved to our south and east. Needless to say the humidity was quite high and I sweat line a beast!
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| The area that's grayed out is part of the lawn where the utility trailer was parked. I raked and seeded that using stuff I had from a couple of years ago. If it grows, fine. If it doesn't, that's okay too. The rains won't hurt! The area fenced in on the right is Terry's herb garden and where we had some very prolific cherry tomatoes and peppers last year. |
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| This large plot (8' x 16') was nothing but string beans last year and it was a flop for some reason. |
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| The lower unfenced plot is only about 3' x 16' and was home to our zucchini and cucumbers the last couple of years. The plot on the left held cherry, Big Boy, and Early Girl tomatoes. Both produced copious amounts of fruit. |
(Well, the first pic is a bit wonky but the others are okay.)
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After dinner I decided to use some of my sourdough starter to make a loaf of bread. The recipe is easy as it only requires one cup of starter, one cup of water, a teaspoon of salt, and 3-1/2 cups of flour. You knead that in a mixer for about 25 minutes until the dough is elastic and a little glossy then throw it into a greased bowl over night to rise. (The air temps need to be around 70-72 degrees.) The dough should double over 8 to 12 hours.
The next day you plop it on the counter and watch it for a half hour. Should it flatten much you knead/fold in some more flour. If it pretty much keeps its shape you don't need to add anything. Just put it on a floured surface and stretch and fold the edges in three or four times.Turn the folds down and shape as you see fit. I will be putting mine into a greased loaf pan. Then it will get covered and let to rise for 3-4 hours until it's nearly doubled again.
Then you put it in a cool oven and turn the heat up to 375 degrees. Bake for about 70 minutes until the top of the loaf is slightly brown and check the interior temp of the loaf. I think 180 degrees on the inside is about right. We'll find out tomorrow afternoon!
The latter has come about because I've finally learned, after 13, almost 14 years of using a Toyota Tundra that that truck my be a little undersized for the size of the trailer we currently own. Granted, our first Tundra hauled us and the trailer we owned at the time (a slightly smaller trailer than we currenly own) all around the continent. And our second Tundra has taken the slightly longer trailer to the west coast, the Canadian Maritimes and points in between more. Still, I feel the call of the Silverado.
It was a Silverado I first owned in the 90s. That truck really racked up the miles to the Bolt Hole north of Utica from northern New Jersey and then from Northern New Jersey to our current home in the Northern Tier of PA. It also hauled all of our belongings out here. It was with that truck that I first towed a travel trailer.
Yeah. If I can convince Terry....
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Watching all the RVing folks travel around the country has sparked a bit of an itch within me. I haven't had a good road trip since 2018 for God's sake! While I may be a bit of an introvert, that doesn't mean I don't enjoy a change of scenery from time to time.
Unfortunately my traveling days will have to wait until the surgery on my right leg is done and can be evaluated.
I also have to figure out what to do with the cats. (Five inside and four--maybe five--outside.)
I should be looking forward to the rest of 2021, but there's that surgery I'm told I need on my right leg. I see the vascular surgeon on June 3rd to discuss the time frame for that surgery.
que sera, sera
A little more than four months in and I've been in the hospital once for a false alarm. I'll have to get out to do some work soon before I'm in for more surgery. The grardens have been turned over and are awaiting some work with the rake and then seeds. I'll wait a week or two more before purchasing plants to go in the ground. Learned that lesson already. Late frosts can be costly.
Anyway, that inactivity led to me perfecting my jigsaw puzzle skills. I got pretty good, completing a 1000 piece puzzle in about three days. I shunned the smaller puzzles. I found only one 3000 piece puzzle that I could not complete and eventually gave up on. It was a Harry Potter puzzle showing Hogwarts. Every piece was nearly identical in shape and size. And there were huge swaths of similarly colored pieces. It drove me nuts!
Of course, March 2020 was when the shit hit the fan and everyone was suddenly locked down. My puzzle skills really came in handy!
I also started some sourdough starter and it took off. I learned how to do a lot of baking: bread, bagels, muffins, pretzels, I tried them all. Sometimes I tried different types of breads and most all came out very good—which was/is bad. Way too many bread products! I finally learned how to keep the mother sourdough in the fridge so I don’t have to bake Every. Other. Day. Now I’ve got to use the mother every two weeks or so.
Terry and I had booked a cruise on Puget Sound for April of 2020. That got canceled by the cruise company and we rebooked for October. That got canceled, too.
My vascular surgeon scared the heck out of me with the angioplasties and the blood thinners he prescribed for me. (It doesn’t help that he has said I’ve got the same problem on my right leg that will need surgery—soon.) As a result, I decided I didn’t really want to go on any cruise. Unfortunately, the cruise company would let us back out despite their having canceled on us twice. As a result, Terry and her sister will be cruising in a couple of weeks. Terry will also make a short trip down to Portland to visit my son and his family.
I also told Joe I wasn’t going fishing in the back of beyond anymore. I didn’t want to take a chance that the plane, even if it was going to check up on us every day, would be able to extract me in time should anything happen. We had already booked a 2020 trip. Joe bought me out with the idea of taking one of his grandsons. Of course that 2020 trip never happened and now the 2021 trip looks to be postponed, too.
I lost the second half of 2019 to degenerative vascular disease and we all lost 2020 to Covid-19. It’s been a couple of horrible, no good years. I want a do over!
Ah, 2019. The first three months were fairly uneventful. Even April started out OK. Terry and I made the trip into New Jersey again to help celebrate one of my sister's granddaughter's birthdays. But after that, things started to go down hill for me.
In mid-April we had a friendly dog show up on our porch. In the rain, of course. Still, it was a real friendly pup. We took it in and, when the rain stopped, we went around the area seeing if it belonged to anyone. The answer was no. It got along well with the cats who mostly ignored it. I posted her picture on Facebook asking if anyone knew to whom she belonged and got only one sketchy reply. We took it to the vets and they said it wasn't chipped so it was ours if we chose. Terry said under no circumstances were we keeping this pooch. I should have insisted but.... So off she went to Animal Rescue over in East Smithfield. She never appeared on their web cite as an option for adoption so she probably never got past the entrance before a staff member took her home.
Around the time the pooch showed up, I developed a severe pain in my left big toe that forced me to stop doing anything that required me to be on my feet. My primary care Nurse Practitioner and I thoujgh I had stubberd my toe somehow and the pain was in one of the joints. A steroid regimine was prescribed and seemed to do the trick.
But in early May another problem arose. I developed large, watery blisters on two of the smaller toes of my left foot. Another visit to the NP. Severe athlete's foot? Whatever. I treated it with plenty of antifungal creams and powders. Wore sandals for a week to let my feet breath. And it worked. The blisters disappeared and my feet felt better than they had in a long time.
They felt so good that I felt capable of doing yard work and so I did. Memorial Day weekend I dropped a couple of ash trees that were stricken by the borer and on their last legs. I left them to finish budding out on the ground. (It draws moisture out of the trunk.) THe rest of the week I did some cleaning up of small trees and wild roses in and around the yard. All in all, I did more than I should and less than what was needed. Still, it's a good thing I had decided to let Joe take his son and granddaughter fishing this year as I stayed home.
The night of Saturday, June 1, I had trouble falling asleep because of what I thought was cramping in my left calf muscle. I had been getting cramps off and on for years but this one was persistent. I sat up in bed for much of the night massaging my calf trying to get the cramping to go away. Finally I had enough and went to the bathroom on the main floor where we had a tub I could soak in without using too much water. I soaked in that hot water for nearly an hour but the cramping didn't go away. When I got out of the tub, I was alarmed to see my left foot was blue! After being in the hot water it should have been red or at least pink like the right foot. Terry, who was now up and dressed for church took one look and said, "Let's go to the hospital. Now!"
The ER at Troy Hospital was anything but busy on a Sunday morning ao I got a physician to look at my foot STAT! as they say. In fact, I had two or three looking at my foot when one of them said, very Doctor McCoy like, "That foot's dead!" His buddies agreed and it was suggested I get myself to the ER at Robert-Packer Hospital in Sayre. "Do you want to wait for an ambulance, or do you have someone who can drive you over there right now?" "Let's go, Terry."
I'm going to say she didn't speed, but we sure did get there in a hurry.
The ER at Robert-Packer was expecting me and I was wheeled (by now I was in a wheelchair because the pain was excruciating) in to an examination room and soon had vascular surgeons looking me over and two hours later I was on the table and under the knife.
A blood clot had formed in the only remaining artery feeding blood/oxygen to my left foot. (The pain and the blisters in/on my toes were smaller vessels being blocked off by clots.) I was on the table for almost eight hours as they searched for a vein to use as a bypass.
I spent several days in the hospital as they wanted to make sure the blood was flowing through the bypass. Then I went to a long term care and rehab facility where I got to exercise my legs and take my meds regularly. The exercising was a challenge because of the number of staples (over 50) and stitches they used to close the cuts on the inside of my leg (from groin to ankle) and on the outside of my shin (knee to ankle). Two weeks later I went and got half the staples out and went home.
I continued physical therapy locally. and as the next appointment for removal of staples approached, my therapist said she noticed a hard lump near the top of the incision on the inside of my thigh. Plus, she said it felt warm. It was her recommendation that I call my vascular doctor so I did. They recommended that I get myself to the ER at Robert-Packer ASAP. (Not quite as big a rush but still important.) So we went off to the hospital's ER--on a Friday night. I know. Bad timing.
We sat for a couple of hours before I got taken in to an examining room. Then I was prepped for the OR where they cut into that lump to suck out all the infectious puss that had accumulated. They left the wound open to allow it to drain and put me in a bed for two days hooked up to several IV's dripping antibiotics into me while they tested the crap to see what kind of bug was causing the infection. Dressings were changed every day. While the 1-1/2 inch deep by 2-1/2 inch long started healing, they removed the rest of the staples. When they finally sent me home, it was with a portable wound vac to continue removing the bad stuff as I healed. A visiting nurse came every other day to inspect the wound and teach Terry how to pack the hole with cotton gauze.
It took a few weeks but I eventually could get that vac detached and pronounce the wound closed. Unfortunately, it was about that time that it was found that the bypass was pinching closed and blood flow to the left foot was decreasing. An angioplasty was required. Think Roto-rooter for your blood vessels. I would have another of these procedures every three months until September of 2020. I rang up a total of four plus one stay for observation.
Those angioplasts would have me staying in the hospital overnight. The last was brought about when I reported some pain just above my knee. A pressure test showed a reduced blood flow necessitating an angioplasty. Several months later February of 2021?) I reported it felt like someone had hit me in the lower thigh with a cricket bat. Pressure tests were showing good blood flow. Still, as a precaution they kept me over night for observation.
Needless to say, I didn't go anywhere from June 2nd on. Except to the hospital and rehab that is. Terry didn't go anywhere either as I sort of anchored her here. We did have some visitors around Thanksgiving but we didn't go to NJ at all for birthday parties or Christmas.
I was happy to turn the calendar page to 2020. Little did I know!
