Hanging out in the garden
Summer has definitively arrived here in the Kootenays, after a particularly long cloudy winter. It’s been really beautiful the last while, making it a pleasure to be out in the yard.
Loving to garden and develop our understanding of growing food, this year we are expanding the existing raised bed garden that’s great for growing tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplant and peppers, due to its protected south exposure. We’ve also just created a new garden plot on the west side of the yard, which I’ve just about finished planting. Bernard researched fencing options (there are deer, so we need to have a fence), phoned around for the best deals and organized to have a local fellow with a market garden come with his tractor to dig up the new area for us. We seem to have lucked upon a good spot with pretty nice soil to start out with.
When it comes to growing our own food we know a little and have much to learn. Two years ago, in addition to the other vegetables, we had a bit of a tomato project, growing about 30 different varieties, saving seed, seeing which grew well here. Last year it was pole beans. This year little plots of millet, amaranth, hulless barley and quinoa are milling with the carrots and cabbages in the new garden. A bunch of fruit bushes have been planted this year too: black and red currants, hardy kiwi, saskatoons, and gooseberries so far. We have big plans, but only one body that can do the physical work necessary, so it takes time. Hiring someone to come dig out the garden was a big help, and keeping the deer fence light and simple for now was also the most practical thing to do.
My mother gave us an outdoor lounger last year that’s made for two people and can lay down flat when needed. This allows Bernard, on his better days, to make his way carefully outside to get some sun and enjoy the beautiful yard and forest. The lounger has a great view of the new garden too. This is crucial to staying positive when he has so much pain and uncertainty about ever being healed.
Summer reminds me that life goes on, even when you’re living with a terrible injury. We try to do at least some of the things we love, because it certainly doesn’t help to get down and sit in the house on a beautiful day. Even though, I must say, it’s weird to be doing ‘normal’ things when really we are in a crisis. It’s like that with everything I do. I know it’s good to do what we can and enjoy ourselves, but then I find it crazy that we aren’t just screaming and crying at the insanity of it all.
2 Responses to “Hanging out in the garden”
Hi
My husband Jim has similar problems. Our 21 year old daughter doesn’t remember him ever being well.
We are currently considering going to Florida to the Laserspine Institute for endoscopic surgery to remove the bone spurs and perhaps repair the multiple hernated disks. We too have been to numerous specialists in Ontario and Quebec who can do nothing.
Best Wishes
Irene
–Nkole
We have a page called ‘Your back injury sucks too.’ It would be great to learn what the process of trying to go to the States is like for you, the risks, the costs, the benefits. And, what has it been like living with this injury for so long? How have you done it?
After some looking around on the net at and about the Laserspine Institiute, it’s apparent that there is some controversy regarding their legitimacy (they’ve been known to send email spam, and at one point they had a fellow named James Edward Kellogg listed as an M.D. from a fraudulent off shore college) and efficacy (traditional specialists saying they offer no actual help). Of course, in our experience, specialists who refuse to learn any new techniques tend to hold on desperately to what they do know, acting like it’s the ‘gold standard of care’, and harshly criticising anything new, so it can be difficult to distinguish that from legitimate concern.
Canadians having to go abroad for modern and/or timely treatment is becoming more common. How do we protect ourselves from those who would take advantage of our desperate situation? The more we discuss, the better, I think.
(Typing will be short, arms aren’t too good today)
Your property and garden look glorious! I grew up in an “interface area” (between city and country, on the edge where the market gardens and hippies lived :)) and am now stuck in a big city and I miss the trees and wildlife and growing things so very much. One of my big goals in life is to be well enough to live out in the country again.
You wrote:
I remember thinking a while back that we needed a word for the situation of being in a “chronic crisis”, rather than the usual temporary and acute kind. I’m luckily doing better than I was a few years ago but I’m still in a fairly fragile state where it feels like I’m juggling more eggs than I can safely manage but any egg dropped means some body system works wrong for at least a while. This month it’s my gastric system - I’m off to eat radioactive scrambled eggs tomorrow to see if my stomach is pushing food into my gut too slowly, as it seems to be. If you see somebody wander by in bed and glowing in the dark, that’ll be me!
Cheers,
Ricky
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