Grumply Day

July 7, 2022 — Pat Bertram

Everything to do with the internet is getting ridiculously expensive. If you don’t pay with cash, you’re paying with the annoyance of multiple ads. It used to be that WordPress, where I have my blog, only showed ads occasionally, and never to someone who had an account. Now, they show ads to everyone, sometimes even in a few places on the same blog. I just checked one of my blog sites, and the ads were more prominent than the post!

If you don’t see ads here, you’re welcome. I pay to make sure no ads show up, but I can’t do that for all my sites. Because of the whole mess with FB, I have to reblog this article onto another blog, then upload the photo to yet a third blog or else I can’t post both the blog and the photo on FB. I could upload the photo directly to FB, but I don’t want them to add my photos to their database. Chances are, I’m fooling myself, but at least, this way, the photo is at one remove. All of this blog sleight-of-hand wouldn’t be necessary if FB hadn’t blocked this blog. For a while, I returned the favor, but too many people said they missed seeing my posts (even though I’m sure most people don’t see them anyway since FB wants me to pay to show my posts to my friends).

I should have persisted with my boycott, especially since I have come to hate the site with a passion. They are continually doing things to make even my few minutes on the site an inhospitable experience.

When I first signed up, it was at a time when hordes of authors were signing up, and no one had a clue what to do. So I started various groups (or took over a stagnant group or two) to give authors a place to talk about writing and to get to know other authors and readers. My plan worked for a while, but over the years there have been numerous changes to the groups so now they are worthless. And yet the changes still keep coming. The latest is that any entity can join any group and post anything (can you say “spam?”). I could, of course, delete the groups, but that would mean deleting each of the thousand members individually, and that takes almost forever. (I know because I did that with another couple of groups.)

What a mess! If I ever decide to leave FB permanently, I will spend the time to remove all of my tracks. And when I do, I won’t have to worry about the ads on my other WP sites because I’ll never need to use them.

If I sound grumply (a typo, but I like the made-up word — it expresses how I feel — so I’m leaving it), it’s no wonder. I am grumply! Not only is it hot, but a strip of my lawn along the fence is dying. I think it accidentally got spritzed with Roundup (not my doing). The grass has been steadily dying the past couple of weeks since the spritzing, no matter how much I water. (If the grass hadn’t been killed, it would have started to green up by now.) To have to deal with internet shenanigans on top of all that is too dang much.

There are a couple of solutions for the rest of the day — turn the air-conditioning down a bit, turn off my computer, and grab a book. And if it is the roundup that killed the grass rather than the July heat, I’ll wait four months until the poison has dissipated and then reseed the areas.

I hope your day isn’t as grumply as mine.

But wait, I forgot! there is one great thing about today: a blooming lily!

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

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Winter in July

July 5, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I checked out a Christmas novel at the library this morning, hoping that the cool chill of winter from the story would bring relief from the summer heat, and oh, what magic! Shortly after starting to read the story, I distinctly felt cooler. I must confess that the coolness wasn’t literary magic but electrical magic — the air conditioner clicked on.

Still, I take my magic however it comes.

Most often, these days, the magic that comes my way is in the form of “yard pretties.” Right now, most of the colors in my yard are varying shades of greens, from the grass, from plants that have flowered and are taking a breath before producing more flowers, from plants that have spent their blossom-forming energy, and from seedlings that are too young to flower.

And yet, there are splashes of color wherever I look. A patch of golden zinnias,

a trio of black-eyed Susans,

a dwarf red plains coreopsis,

an especially eye-dazzling daylily,

and Johnny jump ups.

Oddly, despite their delicate looks, (like miniature pansies), Johnny jump ups are rather aggressive. The Forest Service says it’s an invasive species that has contributed to the decline of 42% of U.S. endangered and threatened species. Eek. Despite the “eek” factor, I doubt my single plant will do much damage to the environment even if it survives the winter, either the literary winter the Christmas novel will bring this July or the actual winter the spinning Earth will bring in December.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

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Holiday Destination

July 2, 2022 — Pat Bertram

The American Automobile Association predicted a record number of road trippers this weekend. Despite the high gas prices, more than 42 million people in the USA will drive to a destination more than 50 miles from home to celebrate the holidays. There are nebulous reasons stated for all that travel — nebulous because with all the rhetoric being spouted, no one really knows why people are heading out. I tend to think people just want to run away for a bit, to pretend that life is back to normal (or more probably back to a normal they wish existed) where there were no wars, no babies going hungry for lack of formula, no deadly disease ready to spawn a new variant, no political polarization dividing families and turning friends into foes.

I’m lucky — I don’t need to contend with all that miserable traffic to get to my holiday destination because I’m already at my destination. There is no place I would rather be than right here, in my own house or outside enjoying my own private backyard park.

A local friend who knows the true state of my yard — that the pictures of flowers I post are pretty much the only flowers that are growing on that given day — teases me (in a friendly way) about my knowing every flower, every butterfly, every blade of grass in my yard, and that’s pretty much the case. She also thinks people should take life the way I do, by celebrating every little thing that comes along. Although I would never say “should” when it comes to other people, she’s right that I do celebrate each new development in my yard. Although I enjoyed my trips — from ocean to ocean and border to border — and loved seeing new things, it’s a privilege being able to experience the constantly changing environment of my own backyard.

It would be nice if the flowers in my yard bloomed constantly, but they come and go. The tulips were supplanted by larkspur and golden poppies, which in turn were supplanted by wildflowers, echinacea, and almost-ready-to-bloom lilies and daylilies. These will be supplanted by other flowers later in the season — marigolds, mums, and purple asters. At any one time, there are at least a few beautiful blossoms, a few spent flowers, and a lot of greenery.

The lawn, too, goes through cycles. Since it’s a cool weather grass that doesn’t like the heat of summer, I seem to be always coaxing brown spots back to life. In another two or three months, though, when the worst of the heat is gone, my grass will perk up again and stay green until the worst of winter.

But for now, I am glad I don’t have to be on the road with millions of others, and I am especially glad for whatever joys this “holiday destination” throws my way.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

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A Welcome Visitor

June 29, 2022 — Pat Bertram

This was another of those days where I wore myself out, not that it’s hard to do since I am still not totally acclimated to the new season. Or maybe it’s the allergies the new season has brought that are aggravating me. Either way, I begin the day worn out, and it only gets worse from there.

I suppose if I took it easy, I wouldn’t get worn out as fast, but then, when I do take it easy, I still feel weary, and nothing is accomplished. At least this way — spending two or three hours outside weeding, cleaning spring flower beds, and watering newly sprouted seeds — I get to enjoy the order I’ve pulled from the chaos.

And I get to dream of the new flowers that I’ll see in another few weeks.

If I stayed inside, I’d also have missed the sublime satisfaction of sitting in my gazebo, gazing out (because isn’t that what a gazebo is, a place to sit and gaze?) on my park-like yard while I rest my weary bones. I can enjoy the gazebo any time, of course, and I frequently do if only for a short time, but it’s even more enjoyable when the rest is well earned.

More importantly, if I stayed inside, I would have missed the visitation of this beautiful creature that seemed particularly taken with my hanging basket of flowers:

Bees, birds, and feral cats all seem to enjoy my garden, but this is the first time this year that I’ve seen a butterfly, and the first time in a couple of years that I’ve seen a swallowtail butterfly.

I’m hoping it won’t be the last.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in gardening, life. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

What’s Right in Front of Me

June 28, 2022 — Pat Bertram

Late yesterday afternoon, I was watching the news with the woman I help care for, when I found myself with tears in my eyes. Normally, I don’t let the news affect me, but yesterday it was just too much — too much war and starvation and horror and all the other stories that are trotted out for our dubious entertainment. Thinking about it, I tend to think it was the juxtaposition of people’s fears about what will happen after the recent Supreme Court decision with babies starving to death in Sudan that got under my defenses. Just . . . too much.

People who are involved in any those news stories have no recourse but to deal with their trauma. Since I neither have to deal with it nor can do anything about it, today I steeped myself in localized, life-affirming actions — tended to my flowers. Though is it actually life affirming if I am pulling weeds? In my own small way, I am deciding what gets to live and what has to die, so perhaps . . .

I don’t know. Perhaps I should stop thinking and just enjoy the color that pops up in my yard.

Surprisingly, despite the onslaught of weeds and the gone-to-seed spring flowers, there is still plenty of color, and with any luck, there will be a lot more as the summer progresses and the seeds I recently planted decide to come up.

I’m sure more of the flowers I planted in May will flower when I get around to weeding and clearing the grass from around the greenery. It’s simply a matter of taking the time to do it. Best of all, when I do such hard work, I’m not thinking of anything but what’s right in front of me.

And that’s as it should be.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

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Weird Times

June 23, 2022 — Pat Bertram

This seems to be a time of weirdness for me, though if things come in threes as the saying goes, then by tomorrow, my life should be back to normal. Assuming, of course, there is a normal anymore.

First, there was the issue with someone trying to change my Facebook password. By itself, it’s not that weird, but at the same time, I was unable to get into the email associated with my website, and two concurrent anomalies do make for weirdness.

Second, there was the issue with Flagstar Bank and their security breach. Again, by itself, it’s not that weird, but their having my identity information is inexplicable. And yet, as someone pointed out, I will get two years of free credit and identity monitoring out of it, though it does seem a bit much since I have no credit to ruin.

Third, well, this third thing isn’t at all in the same category as the first two, but weird nevertheless. I purchased a plant starter at the local hardware store. The planting instructions mention that the plant will grow so densely that in two or three years, it will need to be divided. The instructions also included the caveat that propagation is strictly prohibited. In other words, I will have to propagate the plant by dividing it, but I am not allowed to do so.

That falls more in the category of irony, I think, than true weirdness, but it’s noteworthy all the same. Not that anything will happen to me if I do propagate the plant since here are no propagation police wandering around with magnifying glasses checking out people’s gardens to look for propagation violations. The warning is more for those who sell plants commercially, which, of course, I don’t do. I’m on the other end of the commercial spectrum where I shell out money for plants rather than raking it in.

And anyway, I should be so lucky as to have to propagate the plant. So far, the only plant that’s done well enough to need to be divided are my New England asters. Last fall I divided my single clump of asters and ended up with seven or eight clumps. Each of those clumps look as if they will yield another four or five plants, so I will have to figure out what I want to do with all of them. Right now, the asters are edging part of the swath of grass that sweeps from the side of my house to the back yard, and I’m thinking of continuing to edge the grass with the asters. Luckily, I have several months to decide what to do — I certainly wouldn’t want to jinx the poor plants by counting on their doing well right now when the weird times are in full swing.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

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Happy Summer

June 21, 2022 — Pat Bertram

The first day of summer? Really? It feels as if summer has been here for the past couple of months, with temperatures into the nineties and hundreds. Today, oddly, is a cool, misty day, with fallen leaves sprinkled about. Maybe someone is playing a joke on us, and it’s really the beginning of fall.

More probably, the joke is that we still have three months of heat ahead of us, and today was just a bad connection, where the weather couldn’t log in to the proper season.

I’m just being silly about the incorrect log in — and grateful for the cool day. What made me think of the bad connection analogy was that I couldn’t log into my website email, the one I opted to pay for. (Too many people and businesses and sites have that address for me, and it was too complicated to change. The good news is I don’t have to deal with any ads.)

I called my website provider, and after going through a series of verifications, a real person answered. A real American-English speaking person. It was such a delight talking to someone who understood what I was saying, and moreover, one who had patience with my inability to think of simple words. (Like address bar. Why would that have slipped from my brain?) They didn’t really do anything except take up enough time that the problem fixed itself, but at least the issue is on record, and if there is ever another instance of the same thing happening, I know where to send the screenshot of the very, very, very, very long 500 error code that basically said there was a problem connecting to the server but no one knew what it was.

I’m always leery when two weird computer-related things happen around the same time. I had just received an email from Facebook telling me that someone tried to change my FB password, and if it wasn’t me, to click on the link, which I did. (The link took me to a message that basically just said the problem was reported.) It seemed legitimate, a real Facebook notification, but since my website email address is my backup email for FB, I wondered if whoever had tried to change my FB password had somehow done something to my website email. The real person said the two weirdnesses weren’t related. They also looked up the email address on the FB email, and said that, as I had surmised, it was legitimate. So, whew!

But that’s not what this post was supposed to be about. I’d intended to talk about having summer before it was summer. I’ve spent the past couple of days cleaning up spent larkspur (because of the heat, the plants gone through their cycle and were finished for the year) and planting seeds in the cleared garden areas. When this happens later in the summer, I just let it go, but it seemed a shame to spend the entire summer with an empty garden patch, especially since summer just started today.

And oh! It’s not my imagination — my brown grass is greening up. I think it helped that the lightbulb finally went on, and I sprinkled the dead areas with mulched grass clippings to keep the heat and wind off the grass. (I’ve been moving the mulch around a bit so that the clippings don’t mat down and block air flow to the grass.) And it seems to have helped. Since this appears to be a problem area, I will continue with this light mulching until the cooler weather. If I had any doubts, I now know this is a cool season grass that does not like our summer heat, so I’m sure the grass is enjoying this lovely cool day as much as I am.

Happy summer!

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

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Finding a Focus After Grief

June 17, 2022 — Pat Bertram

Not everyone enjoys my gardening posts, especially those who have found this blog because of grief, and that’s understandable, but the truth is, almost all my posts, even the gardening posts, are indirectly related to grief.

The past twelve years, particularly the past five when the pain of Jeff’s death pretty much disappeared, have been about finding a focus outside myself, about making myself . . . bigger. Becoming more.

When you’re connected to someone in an intrinsic way, such as Jeff and I were, almost by definition, you’re bigger than just yourself. You’re part of a twosome, working together to create a life for yourselves. Your combined energy expands each of you beyond your life into something more than either of you would be individually.

When one half of a couple dies, the one left behind feels diminished. No longer part of a couple, you shrink back to yourself, and it simply doesn’t seem to be enough. At least that’s the way it was for me. At the beginning, my grief was so all-encompassing, my pain so great, my shock at how his death made me feel so intense, that it masked the feeling of smallness. Oddly, when my grief began to dissipate, I started to grieve for my grief because as it turned out, grief was something more, something beyond merely me.

And then one day, there I was . . . just me. No Jeff, no grief, no more grappling with the idea of death, no more feeling the winds of eternity in my face.

And it didn’t seem enough. I didn’t seem enough.

If I hadn’t had that connection to another human being for so many years, I might not have noticed that lack of “enoughness,” though come to think of it, before I met Jeff, I struggled with the meaning of life and was often plagued by thoughts of “is this all there is?” It wasn’t until after he died, and I had shrunk back into myself, that those thoughts returned. I missed Jeff, of course, missed our shared life, but as those memories fade somewhat, what I missed even more is being part of something bigger than myself.

Time has passed, as it does, and now I’m used to being merely me, but I still need to focus on something other than myself, to focus on something outside of myself.

Over the years, that focus has changed — from dance, to travel, to home ownership, to gardening — but always, it’s the act of focusing rather than the focal point that is important. It gives me a reason to get up in the morning, creates a semblance of meaning, lends a sense of “something more” to my life.

So yes, my posts often talk about gardening or my lawn or my house or the improvements I’ve made to the property because that’s what I’m focusing on. As I age, chances are my focus will become more about health issues or finding ways to do things that have become hard to do or maybe even just the weather because in an age-restricted life, weather is about the only thing outside one’s self that changes.

But even those posts, whatever they might be (assuming, of course, I am still writing) will be indirectly related to grief because if Jeff were still here, none of this would be relevant.

But he isn’t here, and I am. So I need something to focus on. For now, that focus is gardening.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

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Doing Something Right

June 16, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I’m a bit surprised at myself. Despite the discouragement of a large swathe of grass getting windburned and flowers dying because of the scorching, arid winds we had a couple of days ago, I’m still out there every day, taking care of my garden. Perhaps I’ve lost some of the joy and maybe even a bit of the zeal I had for gardening, but that isn’t stopping me from doing the best I can for my “baby” (as a friend has dubbed my yard).

Today I watered and weeded, but I also cleaned out some of the dying foliage. The larkspur has run its course, which seems odd to me since they are supposed to bloom all summer, though that might just be in cooler climates. Mine larkspur, for sure, don’t like extreme heat (and we’ve had that in abundance). I did try to cut the flowers back, but they didn’t rebloom, so I let them go to seed. Today I removed a lot of the brown stems and am saving the seeds to replant this fall.

A nice thing about these plants is that they are prolific re-seeders and will pop up next year anywhere the seeds land. Since they don’t last long here, I don’t have to worry about their taking over. They provide nice color early, and then when I have to remove the spent stems, it makes room for later bloomers, such as lilies and echinacea.

There have been a few encouraging developments in my yard, which helps to offset some of the discouragement.

The Shasta daisy I planted last year bloomed for the first time.

The petunias that reseeded themselves are flowering. The original flowers were the dark purple color, but I’m fine with the lighter purple petunias, too, and rightly so since these are basically “free” flowers.

And I had a delightful visitor this morning. A green toad.

I’ve seen brown toads around here, but this is the first green one I’ve ever encountered. At first I wondered if it were a frog, being green and all, so I looked it up. Turns out all toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads, and both frogs and toads are signs of a healthy ecosystem, so despite recent setbacks, having this toad hanging around means I’m doing something right. At least, that’s what I tell myself.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

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A Day for Friendship

June 15, 2022 — Pat Bertram

The first year that I did a daily tarot reading, I used a single card. This second year I used two cards. Next month starts my third year, and I’ll probably graduate to a three-card reading. Not that I’m learning anything much either about the tarot or myself, but you never know. If there’s anything to learn, I’m sure I’ll eventually learn it, and if not, well, it’s as good a way to start the day as any other.

Mostly the reading is rote — I pick the cards, look up their meanings and try to figure out how the two cards fit together. Sometimes there seems no discernable relationship; other times, it’s obvious.

Last night, I dreamt of a wedding. I’m not sure who was getting married, though I tend to think it was one of my sisters. The main thing I remember about the dream, other than the talk of her getting married, is that the bridesmaids dresses were going to be brown. This morning’s tarot cards were the four of wands and the ten of cups. In the deck I am currently using, the Egorov Tarot, the four of wands is about completion, prosperity and satisfaction, and love affairs leading to a wedding. The ten of cups is about true happiness in love and friendship, and weddings.

I must admit, this reading amused me, reflecting, as it did, my dream of an upcoming wedding rather than any real-life experience.

Today was a day for friendships, however, so the cards got that right. One friend stopped by this morning to return a pattern for a paper project that she’d borrowed. We chatted for a while until it was time for me to get ready to host a different friend for tea out in my gazebo. Since today was vastly cooler than the past couple of days, this seemed a good time to try out my new gazebo furniture.

The chairs were comfortable, though after our tea, we took a walk to the dollar store to check to see what sort of cushions they might have. Although I liked the cushions I found, I wasn’t sure I needed them. It just seemed as if they would be more things to have to take care of. We also decided the furniture would be able to withstand the elements better without any cushions, so that’s how we left it.

On my way home, I visited with another friend in the middle of the street. The only time I see this woman, it seems, is happenstance when I’m out walking and she’s out driving. Hence our visits in the middle of the road.

That was the best thing about today — seeing friends.

I still feel a bit sick at the desiccated swath of grass (the only good thing about the desiccation is I’ve finally learned to spell desiccate, just as the only good thing about high temperatures is finally learning how to spell Fahrenheit). I’m pretty sure what happened to that grass is that there are no reserves of water beneath that part of the lawn since that patch of grass is being grown over an area that once was part of a gravel driveway. Although there wasn’t much gravel to be seen when the sod was laid, I have a hunch there were many layers of buried gravel beneath the dirt. So, great drainage, but poor sustainability. I’m not giving up, though. The grass did fine for many months, and if I can get resuscitate it, I’m sure it will again do fine. Meantime, I’ll be watering that patch every day for a while.

Many of the plants that were also affected by those hot, arid winds have recovered though, not surprisingly, the Siberian wallflower had no use for the heat and is struggling.

Still, there are plenty of flowers and greenery to enjoy, especially when I’m sitting in my gazebo, on my new chairs, sipping iced tea with a friend.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

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