Ad Hoc Gardening

Hello All!
I suppose it has been a while since I last blogged...oops!  This has happened to me before...

Since we last spoke, I had a nice Christmas with my family, hung out at home for a while, went back to teach at 2/3 time and have been in regular physio to get my body back into the habit of listening to my brain after my back surgery.  My back is still sore, it fatigues quickly and I can't lift or carry anything that weighs more than ten pounds.  It has improved drastically though and I am very thankful for the ability that I have re-gained and for how it is increasing all the time!

Because of my back, I was essentially banned from any heavy-duty gardening this year.  I was initially quite disappointed by this since the most I could do was pick dandelions from my front yard with a picker that was designed for people with arthritis and bad backs.  I can't even mow my own lawn!  Doing things like digging and carrying/spreading large amounts of weed-preventing mulch were out of the question.

This has lead to quite an ad hoc garden this year.

Some friends of mine gave me some of their surplus tomato and chives which I was able to get into the ground.  The birds and squirrels inadvertently planted some sunflower seeds over the winter.  Some perennial yellow daisy-like things came up.  There are white bell-like things growing where there's not even a garden.  Some stowaway purple things and day-lilies came through the fence from the neighbour's side.  I have a "wildflower" garden happening under the spruce trees in the back.  Until Canada Day weekend, I had a pretty good crop of milkweed growing in the front garden.

Some of my family came to visit over the long weekend and my brother Rory was inspired to make my gardens more reasonable.  He was excited to do some gardening on someone else's dime and it has made me so happy to put up that dime!  He pulled out the milkweed in the front and put in a pretty blue hydrangea to compliment the other plants in the front garden.  The hydrangeas were on sale so I got a second one to add to the random assortment in the side garden in the back yard

I was able to pull out the weeds that were growing between the actual plants in the side garden and plant some lettuce, carrots and beans.  They are a bit late on the scene, but I figured that they should produce something since the planting instructions encourage staggered planting throughout the summer to provide a continuous harvest.

The back garden remains a wildflower haven!

Here are some pics:

Window-well Sunflower

Sprouted Lettuce

Stowaway Purple Thing

Surplus Tomatoes

Wildflowers Under Spruce Trees

Yellow Perennials

Side Garden.  Foreground: Sunflowers, Yellows, White Things, Wildflower Garden

New Blue Hydrangeas 

I'm going to link up to the wonderful blog my friend MaryMary shares with her sister, Outside At Home.

BACK to the Blog

Good afternoon Blogosphere!
Since we last spoke, I have had some of the cartelage removed from my L5-S1 joint.  This means I'm slighltly lighter and am in much less pain than I was when we last spoke, although, the recovery has been slower than I thought it would be.

It has now been four weeks since my operation.  I have been encouraged to slowly increase my activity and I am just back from a walk to the Library, a distance of about 1 km from my house (making it a 2 km return trip, if you're counting).

I have been enjoying this unusually sunny November for all my walks.  It does the heart good to see the sun shining almost every day even though it doesn't shine for as long as it does in June!  Another November activity I have been enjoying is eating leftover Hallowe'en candy.  The neighbours said that 100 treats should be enough, so obviously, my mom (who was looking after me after the operation) had to buy at least 200 treats! Only 18 kids came to the house.  If you come into my kitchen you will notice the cannisters of candy. Some people make fun of me for this, saying that most people keep cannisters of flour or tea on their counters but I haven't had a guest under 15 yet who was upset by this ;-)

I have had a few outings since my surgery: the grocery store, Zellers, Walmart and a Sunday Church Meeting among them.  However, one of the nicest outings I have had was seeing The Once perform at the National Arts Centre.  Lesley and Annie gave me tickets for my birthday.

For those of you who don't know them, I suggest you find out about them!  They are a folk band from Newfoundland.  They play many instruments such as guitars, irish drums, banjos, bazookis, mandolins and are able to blend their voices in beautiful harmonies.  They mostly play traditional songs, but have some original compositions and some folked-up covers of bands like Queen and Leonard Cohen.

Well, I guess Leonard Cohenisn't actually a band but more of a Canadian icon and I also guess that his music can often be classified as folk already but I do know that you will agree with me that Mr. Cohen is one of those rare artists whose music sounds better when sung by others.  Don't get me wrong, his lyrics are pure poetry and magic but the strange gravelly chanting voice accompanied by wispy female ahhhs, ooos and word repetition just doesn't do it for me.

Anyway, I was talking about The Once....a very great band, you should check them out.  You can do that by clicking here.  They will be releasing a Christmas album very soon, you should buy it!

Since it has been so long, I have lots to share with you but I don't think it's in our best interest for me to write it all at once.  Here are some topics you can look forward to in the coming days:
--Knitting update (you know you're so interested!)
--Carla's Netflix Picks
--Cooking with a back injury
--Christmas Decorating!
--probably more stuff that I just can't think of right now

Before I sign off, here is a gratuitous First Snowfall Picture.  I love the first snowfall!  I walked through the a school yard today and noticed that the kids had made forts and houses by squishing the snow together with their feet to form walls that were no more than 30 cm high.  Really, they are outlines of forts or houses.  I remember those fondly!
Here is my snowfall picture:

This picture also shows off my bird feeder.  I hung it up yesterday.  The birds haven't found it yet but the squirrel spent most of yesterday morning sniffing the air and wishing he could climb the metal posts of my pergola thing.

And because goodbyes are so hard, I have one more thing for you before I sign off.  A video of The Once performing Sail Away to the Sea.  Check them out.

Ok, just The Once more...seriously...check them out...buy their records...request them on your radio stations...

Baked Grilled Cheese and Other News

So, this morning when I woke up (the first time at 5:00) I got thinking about a dilemma that I currently have.  I have a few jars of lovely home made tomato soup (kindly given to me by good friends who grow tomatoes and not weeds in their gardens).  I also have a great love of grilled cheese sandwiches.  Now for the dilemma: I cannot stand at the stove to cook grilled cheese sandwiches. So I got to thinking and I realized there must be a way to bake grilled cheese instead of frying it.  It turns out, as it often does, that internet people have already thought of this brilliant idea.  I'll let you do your own googling on this one, check out some of the comments on some of the sites--people are really into this!

I made my sandwich the usual grilled cheese way except I pre-heated my toaster oven to about 425F and popped it in.  I flipped the sandwich after about 5 minutes and about 5 minutes later it was done! The bread was golden brown and the cheese was perfectly melted with barely any standing on my part!  Of course, I accompanied this culinary delight with some of the aforementioned tomato soup.

This morning when I woke up (for the second time at 9:30) it was to the sound of the phone ringing.  On the other end of that phone call was a lady from the Civic Hospital here in Ottawa.  She was calling to let me know that I will be having back surgery on October 26th.  It is a day surgery and they will be moving some muscle and some nerve and cutting some bone to get to my disk and remove part of it (it is called a diskectomy).  I guess if a disk slips, it gets removed from play to teach it a lesson.  I have intentionally not googled this surgery but my neurosurgeon tells me that I will have a 6 to 8 week recovery period then I'll be able to resume normal activities.  The irony is, the recovery period involves pretty much the same sort of stuff I'm doing now--avoiding sitting, changing position frequently, watching Netflix.  Hopefully the recovery will involve less pain and fewer drugs.  My Mom will come down to Ottawa to take care of me during the first part of my recovery (it's so nice to have a Mom who is a retired nurse!).

Well, that's all I can think to write at this point.  All my current knitting projects are of the top secret variety so you'll have to sit tight!

Mind your backs,
Carla

An Early Morning

This morning I woke up at 5:40 and couldn't get back to sleep. I tried to doze until about 8:00 when I 'threw in the towel' and got up. It was kind of nice to be up early and not have to rush to a doctor's appointment. Since I have been off work with this back thing, I have fallen into the bad habit of staying up until past midnight and waking up around 11. Usually I will wake up one or two times in the night, take some pills, read some blogs and drift back to sleep.  That makes me sound like a bit of a drug addict, most of the pills I take are ibuprofen or tylenol...and sometimes prescription narcotics...

Ok...back to this morning...it was quite nice to wake up and not have to rush off anywhere. I turned on the radio to hear Radio 2 Morning, something I often miss given my current sleep habits. The very last song of the morning was Of Whom Shall I be Afraid by Jim Byrnes, a blues musician from Vancouver. I really enjoyed this song and it went right along with the story of Gideon I was reading in the Bible. Here is a video of Jim Byrnes with the Sojornors singing the song at a music festival:

Gideon can be found in Judges 6, 7 and 8. The basics of the story of Gideon are pretty well known: little guy--hiding from Israel's enemies--Angel of the Lord appears and calls him a great warrior--asks God to show him a sign that this is true--puts out fleeces for proof--fleeces are wet then dry--he defeats the enemy with God's strength.  The signs that he asks for are sometimes seen as a lack of faith (my question would be: why does he make it to Hebrews 11-the Hall of Faith?).

If you go and read about Gideon, you will see that he quickly looses confidence in himself and in what he thinks he has heard from God--he doesn't lose faith in God. At every point of decision in this story, Gideon looks to God for reassurance. God always comes through. At each turn in the story, God reminds Gideon where his strength is. Gideon doesn't wallow in self doubt, he acts on what God tells him is true. Gideon places his hope and trust in God.

God knows that people need reassurance. He knows that we need to ask and see him move; that we need to listen and hear his voice. That is why he gives us things along the way. If you are hoping in him for something very big that he hasn't given you yet then he has probably shown you other, smaller things that confirm that promise or other ones that he has made to you. God doesn't leave us dangling, not in pain, not in waiting, not in loneliness or disappointment. God always moves and will show us how he is moving if we ask.  This is one of the reasons Jim Byrnes's song is so true!

Hey there Blog
It's been a while since we last spoke (especially after my two-day-in-a-row debut). What are my excuses? A very busy weekend: starting on Friday I had no less than two sets of visitors per day. An appointment on Monday with a neurosurgeon, more about that later. Plus sleeping off a head/neck ache for a day and a half. That about brings us up to date!

The weekend was pretty great, lots of friends from school and church dropped by and my brother and his family came to visit. It was nice to have the brodiggler here. We accomplished a lot (well, Rory and Lucy accomplished a lot). Thanks to them, I now have artwork hung in my living room, laundry done and an air-matress ready and inflated for my next overnight guest. It's no-longer bring your own mattress at my place folks!

It was also just great to have the family around. Family is great because they are instantly comfortable in your house and have no hesitations finding their way around the kitchen to make coffee in the morning if they're up before you. I got so many nice hugs from Little Miss Maya who just turned two...and a good number of slobbery kisses too.

Speaking of family, my Mom and my sister Randi came up from North Bay on Sunday night. Randi had a PD day on Monday which was conveniently the same day as my neurosurgeon appointment. It was nice to have them over too...nothing like having your mom around when you don't feel good. We watched A Series of Unfortunate Events (perhaps that was more due to my dark sense of humour than Randi and I having read the book a few summers ago).

After a night of not very much sleep, we went down to the Civic Hospital to meet my neurosurgeon. She made me wait a very long time and when I finally got to see her she told me that she would like to wait two more weeks before giving me surgery. She says that within six weeks of the initial injury, a disk will sometimes move back into place and that would take away the need for a potentially risky surgery. So, its more waiting for me. Good thing Im pretty good at that waiting thing.

The head/neck ache isn't much to worry about. It's my body's standard response to stress and lack of sleep--something that I have had a lot of since this whole back thing started. Still, it is strange to lose a day and a half altogether.

In other news, I managed to finish two projects and give away three last week!
Here is the hat and bootie set I made for Baby Joe. Notice the leaf on the hat since his daddy is an arbourist. I gave it to his mommy when she came to visit me.

And the hat I made for my friend Christy who re-arranged her life to sit in the ER with me for two days. (Sorry for the strange self-portrait, let's just say the sun was in my eyes!)

And some fingerless gloves I made for Maryann's birthday present.

They are all knit in Cascade 220 in various colours. The booties are the Gansey Booties I talked about in my last post. The baby hat is the Gooseberry Hat by Suvi Simola and the leaf pattern is called Just a Leaf by Hinke they are both found on Ravelry. Christy's hat is the New Sweetie Pie Hat from Purl Soho. Maryann's gloves are Fetching from Knitty.

A New Blog, A New Situation

Hello Everyone in Blogland, I have decided to start blogging. I have a bit of a new situation. On Labour Day Weekend I decided to move some furniture and ended up herniating a disk in my back. The disk is bulging into my spinal cord (I saw the MRI). Because of the pain that I'm in and the drugs that I'm on, I have had to take an indefinite amount of time off teaching. I am waiting for an appointment with a neurosurgeon and I will find out on the 24th what I will need to do to fix this and maybe a time-frame of getting back to work. In the past ten days of being off, I have learned a few things: 1. I have a great group of friends in this city. I am amazed by the support and care that people have shown me. I have a fridge-full of food and a social calendar that is packed with visits and tea and suppers! 2. I can't just lay around and watch tv all day everyday (I end up feeling sad, unproductive and restless). 3. Even though I can't walk very far, I can still spend time outside. I found one of those vinyl table cloths that I spread in a sunny spot in my back yard and pile my necessary pillows onto it. Sometimes I bring the radio out with me and listen to CBC Radio 2 Drive while I knit. 4. I can knit quite comfortably in my default 'all fours' position if I lean against a footstool. I have found that double-pointed or circular needles work much better than typical straight needles. The straight needles are too long and get caught on my footstool and pillows. 5. Since signing up for Netflix six days ago, I have managed to use up 75% of my 20 Gb on the Rogers Lite internet service. I will need to upgrade modems and switch to the 80 Gb service plan. As another back-friendly activity, I will update this blog regularly while I am off. I'm thinking this will be a blog about anything that's on my mind. You will probably find some knitting posts (I have a stockpile of finished objects that have been waiting to be posted!). You will probably also find life anecdotes, music suggestions and spiritual ruminations. It will be a bit of a grab bag and I won't be offended if you only read the posts that interest you :-) I'll sign off with a photo from my summer adventure to the North Shore of Lake Superior. Carla