Pat Van Winkle

August 11, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Even though we’re in the middle of a heat wave, the past few days I’ve gone outside in relative cool of the early morning to do some much-needed work — trimming overgrown plants, weeding, deadheading, and whatever else I happen to notice when I’m out there. It’s exhausting work, not just the activity but because “relative cool” in no way means “cool.” There is still a lot of weeding to do, but luckily, much of it is not in my view, so I can pretend the weeds aren’t there until I again get the inclination to work that hard.

Yesterday, after I finished working and recuperated a bit, I had to run errands and pick up a couple of food items. I stopped at the nearby dollar store, walked inside, and stopped cold. I stared around at all the Halloween items, totally confused. “What month is this?” I asked a nearby clerk. She laughed, knowing exactly what I meant, and replied, “It’s August.”

Whew! For a minute there, I thought something had happened when I’ve been all caught up in working, like perhaps a month or two passing without my realizing it. I joked and told her that the early seasonal products were not fair for us older folk living alone because we have a hard enough time keeping track of the days.

Although considerably younger, she admitted she’d felt the same way when they got the shipment of Halloween items, and even worse, they’d already received their Thanksgiving shipment.

I hope the moment of befuddlement, not knowing what month it was, isn’t a prognostication of my future. I certainly don’t like the feeling of utter befuddlement. It’s bad enough that the world is passing me by —

I had to stop there and think. Is the world passing me by, and if it is, is it a bad thing? And if it is a bad thing, do I care?

Actually, no. I don’t care, as long as I don’t get confused. For me, confusion is too disorienting, and leaves me . . . confused.

At least there’s no confusion in my mind now. It’s still August. We’re still in a heatwave, though it’s expected to cool down in a couple of days, and I’m still me, not any sort of out-of-time “Van Winkle.”

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Chugging Along

August 7, 2026 — Pat Bertram

If I suddenly disappear, don’t worry. I’m probably fine, just taking a break from blogging. What’s going on in the world is just so discouraging that I get tired of writing about what I am trying to think through. Actually, I’m tired of trying to think things through, too, tired of trying to find a way to make everything — anything — make sense. (Though how does one make sense of what in many cases is utterly senseless?) In fact, I was seriously considering this to be my last post for a while, but a friend left me a message “Do not give up!” And that made a big difference. So thank you.

Not that I really want to talk about “the issues,” it’s that they are on my mind. Normally, I can push those thoughts away with talk of my garden, but right now, there’s not even much to say about my yard, not many pictures to show. At this time of year, the weeds sprout ten times faster than I can pull them up. (I am prone at times to exaggeration for the sake of making a point, but the speed at which the weeds are sprouting is the literal truth. Spurge, the worst offender, sure is a scourge! It’s everywhere.) Also, the summer flowers are mostly gone and the fall blooms still weeks away. Well, except for the marigolds. This year, they are like weeds, having planted themselves in copious numbers, even crowding out plants I paid for. What I discovered is that whatever marigolds are supposed to do to keep bugs away, they don’t. In fact, there are more bugs in my self-planted marigold beds than there are in the rest of the yard.

Although I don’t really like marigolds, except for their ability to brighten dead spots in fall, the French marigold is different. The odor isn’t as strong, the petals aren’t as compact, and the color is brighter. As with the traditional marigolds, these also self-seeded. In fact, I have more of them this year than were planted last year. (I didn’t plant them specifically — they came in an assortment of orange wildflowers.)

I do have a single pumpkin growing. I used to see a lot of thumb-size babies, but they all disappeared. I don’t even know how that happened. Maybe the momma pumpkin absorbed them. It’s a good thing I only need one pumpkin! Even though the tomato plant is as big as a bush, it still hasn’t produced a single blossom, and though the cantaloupe is producing flowers, it’s not producing fruit.

Yep. A discouraging time all around. Though that’s nothing new. According to blogs I posted at this time in previous years, that discouragement seems to a sign of the times. I can’t even blame my malaise on the heat — we had a couple of days hinting of fall before the 100+ temperatures returned.

I’ll chalk up my discouragement to the midsummer blahs, and keep chugging along, even if I do give in to my inclination to stop blogging every day.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, blogging, gardening, life. Tags: , , , , , . 10 Comments »

Useful Folk

August 3, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I saw a video clip the other day that made me think, which I’m sure was not the fellow’s intention since he seems to hate old people and think they should all be done away with. Still, this fellow, with more hardware poked into his face than I have in my toolbox, said that some old guy came up to him, gave him twenty dollars, and suggested he remove the hardware. Rude? Probably? Uncalled for? Well, perhaps. But the question is, why would someone make himself into such a spectacle if he didn’t want to be noticed? Anyway, he ranted on and on about how useless “the boomers” are, without any real knowledge of what the boomer generation is. He said they just sat around and did nothing, which some older folks do, especially those older than the boomers. For the most part, the boomers I know are still working, taking care of grandchildren, volunteering, writing, gardening . . . any number of activities.

It seemed to me that he was not the sort of person to get involved with older folks who are strangers, such as those he’d meet if he were volunteering at a retirement home, so the only way he would know if “the boomers” did nothing but sit around all day was if he knew someone personally, someone perhaps who wouldn’t give him money when he asked. Which made his rant more personal than a sweeping generality, especially since he said he needed gas and the twenty dollars the old boomer gave him was necessary. Which completely negates his rant, because obviously, that old boomer had a particular use and wasn’t worthless to the ranter after all.

Apparently, a lot of the younger generations share his viewpoint about “the boomers” being useless and that they should all be put out of their misery (the misery the young people are feeling, that is, not the misery the old folks probably aren’t feeling). Some people see this attitude as the first step toward generational warfare, which is entirely possible. (Supposedly one of the reasons they hate older folks is they are supporting those “useless” people with their social security taxes, but that there are too few of them to support all of the old people and have money left for themselves. It would seem, then, as if the end — based solely on numbers — would favor the oldsters.) Even some of the self-proclaimed “elder millennial” commentators I used to listen to (emphasis on “used to”) turn out to have that same anti-boomer prejudice, which is funny because they hate being classified as part of the black monolith that’s supposed to be voting democratic, but they see “boomers” as just another faceless monolith.

All of that is preamble to what the hardware guy made me think: Who, actually, deserves to live? Who among us is so worthy of life that everyone else should be eliminated to make room for them? What makes a person worthy of living? What makes one person more useful than another? Is anyone useful, really?

Is a baby contributing to society? Is a kid going to school? What about a person who doesn’t work but manages to get enough handouts to live a life of leisure while pleading poverty? What about the rich folks who are funding the subversive movements in this country? What about the fraudsters? What about the teachers who propagandize rather than teach kids to think? What about the university bigwigs who take money from enemies of the United States to further propagandize the students? What about the scientists who develop drugs and other substances to keep people on a medical treadmill? What about the “experts” who make up the news — or slant it — rather than simply reporting it? What about the editors who decide what we are too stupid to understand? What about the commentators who spew innuendo with straight faces?

If we were to do away with all the worthless folk, the only ones left would be you and me, and I sometimes wonder about you.

[Sorry, I couldn’t resist. That’s something my dad would say to me when I was young: “All the world’s crazy but you and me, and I sometimes wonder about you.” He sure did think that was funny!]

Despite that last facetious remark, there is a tinge of truth to it. In my case, I might not still be working at a paying job, but I am working in my garden, which gives a lot of people pleasure —my neighbors, people walking by, people driving past on purpose to see what I am doing. When I do see people, I always have a smile or a kind word or a hug to give away. I might not be contributing much to the economy, but I leave behind barely perceptible footprints: I live on a miniscule income, drive as little as possible, don’t waste food or much of anything. I just try to live a quiet life of peace, which adds to the entire mantle of peace that perhaps protects us.

Who’s to say that’s not as important as . . . well, as anything that’s important, if there is anything that’s important.

So, to turn the tables on the ranter, perhaps by giving me something to think about, he actually turned out to be one of the useful folk.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Dreams I Never Dreamed

July 28, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s your biggest dream?
View all responses

I don’t have any dreams, biggest or otherwise. Well, I do have the night kind, but I don’t have many of those either, at least not that I remember. Should we have dreams? I don’t know. I tried looking up dreams on Google, but no matter what my search terms, I always ended up with a list of sites pertaining to nighttime dreams. I even asked if we needed a dream, and what I got was a lecture on the importance of REM sleep.

So, I guess I’m on my own for a definition of this topic.

Do we need to have a dream? It seems to be the consensus (except for Google) that yes, we do. As Harper’s Bizarre once sang, “You gotta have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?

As far as I can recall, though, I never really had a dream, something I was passionate about that I wished would happen or that I could work toward happening. When I was young, I wanted to be an author, even quit a job to pursue the craft, and it came as a shock when I discovered I had no talent. Years later, long after any vestige of that ambition had disappeared, I learned how to write, even had some books published but never became a “real” author, one who makes a living by writing. Perhaps the closest I came to having a dream was after Jeff died when I considered walking the Pacific Crest Trail, or walking cross country, or doing some other epic walk. I called it an impossible dream in my many blog posts about pursuing that dream, and as it turned out, it was impossible, but still, it was something that consumed my attention for many years. I researched, tried to get in shape enough to carry a heavy pack, did so many things to try to achieve that “dream,” though was it a dream? I don’t know. Looking back, it seems less a dream and more of a mental escape or a way of coping with a life of uncertainty.

And my life was uncertain. After Jeff died, I moved a thousand miles from our home to go take care of my aged father, and then after he died . . . well, let’s just say I was untethered.

Still, back then, I did think a lot about trying to find a “dream,” a way of getting through the rest of my life as fully engaged as possible. I did a lot of things in pursuit of a dream, though in fact, I’d never even dreamed any of those dreams. Dancing on stage, for example. I’m not the lightest of folks, not much of one for music or rhythm or bendability or any of a dozen other things one thinks about when you think of a dancer. And yet I did learn to dance, even did several performances on stage before a live audience. Apparently, despite the Harper’s Bizarre song, you can have a dream come true even if you never had the dream.

It’s the same with my house. Until I decided to spend my last bit of savings on a house, I’d certainly never even entertained the idea of owning a piece of property. Once I had the idea, I dreamed the house into existence, and now I seem to be living a dream, one that I never really dreamed.

And my garden. It’s a dream of a garden, that’s for sure, but for sure one that I’d never dreamed. In fact, I distinctly remember thinking (and telling people) that I didn’t want a garden or any landscaping. I wanted a yard that would take care of itself, and yet here I am, with an aftermath of a dream I never had.

Although I still don’t have dreams, I continue to open to whatever comes my way. And who knows, one day I might find myself in another situation where a dream I never dreamed actually came true.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Rushing the Seasons

July 25, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I don’t like rushing the seasons. Instead, I try my best to get through the most trying days, even if only to remind myself that in just a few months, I’ll be complaining about the cold. But we’re in a sizzling hot spell, several days over 100 in a row, with the apex tomorrow at 109. Eek. It’s not that much of a problem, actually, since I do have a roof over my head and a way to keep the house — and me — cool, but still, those temperatures make even early morning chores a challenge. And, too, I can’t use open windows as a way to cool down the house in the evening because around here, at this time of year, it doesn’t cool down much until close to midnight.

I have to admit, that while I was hoping to bypass such temperatures this year since we had an early onslaught of summer (sometimes that’s an indication of an early cool down), stretches of more than 100 degrees are not at all uncommon. And anyway, although we’ve been in the 90s for weeks, we’ve only blipped into the 100s a couple of times. I do think this spate of sizzling weather is coming later this year than normal, but it’s hard to remember. Hot is hot.

For the next few days especially, I’ll do what I can to make my outside chores easier. It helps that so many of the summer flowers are through (or almost through) blooming. There are still a few lilies, a few echinacea, a few marigolds starting (which I don’t like particularly, but they love it here), and the petunias, of course, but for the most part, there’s not a lot to see out there except one heck of a lot of work I’m not doing.

One thing that is going strong enough to celebrate is my pumpkin vine. I just wanted the vine (ten feet long right now!) since I had a huge area to cover quickly, but still, a couple of the blossoms are turning into fruits. (Pumpkin is considered a fruit because it develops from the flowering part of the plant; it’s treated like a vegetable, but technically it’s a type of berry. Odd, that.)

Despite my claim of not liking to rush the seasons, I’d just as soon skip over the next week. Still, since there’s no choice, I’ll sweat it out (literally and figuratively), and hope that my grass, my flowers and I all survive the blast of heat.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Every Day Holds a Gift

July 24, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I’ve never been much of a Pollyanna, able to find something to be glad about in every situation, no matter how bleak. Sometime a silver lining is so tarnished as to be all but invisible. Sometimes pain is preferable to ignoring it. When someone dies, there is no reason for celebration; nor, when one feels physical pain, should one ignore the cause. Still, I am aware that each day does hold a small gift. Even in my bleakest times, I was aware of moments of peace, kind words, a hug, being able to finally sleep. All things we take for granted, but they loomed large as bits of light in the darkness.

Now, with a garden, I no longer have to simply be aware of the gifts that come my way, nor do I have to search them out. Some gifts bloom in such glory that doing anything other than celebrate the moment seems churlish.

There have been times, of course, where the outside work seemed to overshadow those gifts and, admittedly, the work can be exhausting and even painful if I do too much. But still, it’s worth it just for the gifts of the garden.

And today’s gift, pictured below, is truly a thing of beauty. My lily tree forest is winding down for the season. There are still a few blooms, and apparently, they saved the best for the last.

A true gift! One, moreover, that makes all the work worthwhile.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Dealing With Bermuda Grass

July 20, 2026 — Pat Bertram

And today’s lesson, boys and girls, is all about Bermuda grass. The scientific name for Bermuda grass is Cynodon dactylon, though it goes by many names besides Bermuda grass, such as quickgrass, devil grass, twitch grass, and couch grass. It is a weed found all over the world, probably originating in sub-Saharan Africa or perhaps on islands in the western parts of the Indian Ocean. It’s called Bermuda grass because it was introduced to the USA via Bermuda. Although around here, Bermuda grass is used for lawns because of its tolerance for sun and heat, it is considered one of the world’s most invasive weeds, one moreover, that is almost impossible to get rid of. Not only is it hard to kill, it spreads by so many ways that containing it is an exercise in frustration. Its roots go down deep, sometimes as much as six feet. It spreads by rhizomes, which are long runners below the ground that pop up in unexpected places. It spreads by stolons, which are runners above ground that root themselves as they travel. (I’ve found them as long as eight feet, creeping beneath my front ramp from one garden area to the other.) They spread by seeds, and since every part of the plant is biologically viable, it also spreads by grass clippings.

So why this lesson? Because why should I be the only one to suffer with my Bermuda grass struggles!

That weed grass is taking over one section of my yard, and to be honest, if I’d known it wanted to be there so badly, I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of digging up that area and planting a “real” lawn. I’d pretty much given up trying to control the Bermuda grass the past year or so and just let it do its thing, thinking that it at least was green. But this year, the grass went to seed, and I didn’t want my whole yard overtaken by that invader, so I’d been pulling up what I can. It turns out, the grass seed heads sprout at the end of the stolons, so I’ve been able to get rid of a lot of stolons that have been interweaving itself through the grass I planted. I realize I’m not getting the roots, but by pulling up the long stolons, I’m keeping them from rooting in other places. At least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

The area that I’m trying to clear isn’t that big, but when I’m searching the lawn inch by inch, it seems huge! Unfortunately, by the time I’ve worked a bit pulling up stolons, I’ve used up my energy for the day, and so the weeds are taking over my garden areas. And yikes — the spurge is everywhere! It’s funny — this is such a hostile environment so in many ways: shimmeringly hot summers, frigid winters, winds all year, low moisture, and alkaline clay soil — you’d think nothing would grow, but the plants that like it here, really like it. Unfortunately, many of those plants are weeds that are extremely hard to get rid of.

Still, for all that, my yard looks pretty darn good!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in gardening, home. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »

My Back Forty

July 17, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Usually at this time of year, my “back forty” is lying fallow. It’s really a “back twenty” — an area about twenty feet by ten feet, but who’s counting. Almost everything I ever planted back there has died off except for a couple of plum trees I planted a few years ago, which in six years have produced a grand total of four plums. The plants that were here when I bought the place are still going strong — a wild rose, a honeysuckle, and a trumpet vine, but those plants are obviously well adapted to their environment. I think it gets too hot in that section for most plants, with the sun reflecting off the white garage next door and then kept sandwiched in between the two garages. In the spring, the area is lush with larkspur, but once I harvest the seeds and clean out the dead stalks, I just let it be. It just never seemed worth trying to grow anything.

Last year, I’d planted a tomato plant, a pumpkin vine, a watermelon vine, and a cantaloupe vine in my raised garden, and those four plants so overwhelmed the relatively small garden that this year I decided to try planting them in my back section, thinking they’d have plenty of room to grow. And they are doing supremely well! Perhaps the trees have grown enough to provide a bit of shade, but whatever the reason, I’m delighted.

I transplanted self-planted marigolds from the raised garden to provide a bit of protection for my “farm garden.” (If four plants can be considered a garden, let alone a farm garden.) I also threw out some wildflower seeds I’d been gifted, and though in previous years, nothing ever came of the wildflowers, this year they are adding to the lushness of the area.

Going by old blog posts I’d written around this same time, this is usually a discouraging time for me. Not only are the heat and humidity hard to bear, but they deplete my energy and my desire to do anything. (I know you people who live in truly high humidity will laugh at my thinking that 40% is high, but when you are used to single digit humidity, that is a huge change. And anyway, that’s just the afternoon humidity — the early morning humidity gets close to 80%.) This year, although the heat and humidity are playing with me, I am managing to keep up a semblance of enthusiasm for the yard, and I tend to think it has to do with that back twenty. With those vines growing so long (the pumpkin vine is at least ten feet long right now, though the others are catching up), they are easily filling the area with a lot of green and some luscious blossoms.

There seem to be many pumpkins starting to grow, but oddly, that wasn’t my main reason for planting them. And anyway, I have no idea what to do with the pumpkings once they’re big enough to eat.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Lily Forest Update

July 15, 2026 — Pat Bertram

My lily forest is still going strong. Lush and vibrant, it’s at its peak, so I am making sure to enjoy the blooms every day.

And now, you can enjoy them, too!

It’s interesting that this tiger lily showed up among the more traditional lilies.

You can see it hiding among its taller brethren in the following photo.

As I’m sure you’ve figured, I have nothing much to say today.

Still, considering that a picture is worth a thousand words, or so I’ve heard it said, then this post is a good 5,000 words long. Well, 5,000 plus the 120 words of text.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Alien Invasion

July 14, 2026 — Pat Bertram

If you think you’re going to be reading a blog about invaders from another planet or even from another country, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Though, truly, for all I know, this discussion of alienism could be about something from outer space. Spores, perhaps.

These plants are called hen and chicks because, I presume, of the way they proliferate. The mother hen grows multiple babies, then, when she gets tired of them clinging to her skirts, she gets ready for her end by flowering. Unlike other plants, when these particular genera of hen and chicks finish flowering, the worn-out hen gives up the ghost so that her chicks can have room to grow.

Although I like the plants, especially the way they create a lovely carpet of succulents that look like fallen blossoms, I find the flowers creepy.

The central portion of the hen grows and grows and grows, sort of like the alien in Kim Bassenger’s purse in the My Stepmother is an Alien.

Very creepy.

The flowers themselves aren’t really that bad, in fact, they’re sort of pretty in an otherworldly sort of way, like something you’d see under a microscope, but the whole thing — the base, the long stalk, the bundle of flowers at the very top — is . . . well, it’s just creepy.

Most years, my hen and chicks don’t flower, and if they do, it’s only one or two. Usually, when they start to become alienish, I pull up the mother hen. I figure, since it has to be pulled up after she flowers, I might as well do it before so I don’t get creeped out.

But this year, more than a dozen mothers all got to flowering. A veritable invasion! I let them do what they wanted, even knowing my reaction, for the same reason I do so much of what I do — it gives me a blog topic. (I used to do a whole lot of things simply to have something to write about, but I don’t do that so much anymore, so what goes on in my yard has to suffice.)

This morning, I took the photos, wrote this blog, and then I went out and got rid of my alien invasion.

Whew! Disaster averted.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, gardening, home, life, photography. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »
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