Righteous Exhaustion

November 9, 2021 — Pat Bertram

With all the work I’ve been doing to landscape my yard, as well as tracking in dirt into the house via my shoes (even though I leave them at the door, the dirt seems to spread throughout the house), I’d pretty much given up housework as a lost cause. Well, today, that cause ceased to be lost and instead became found. And ai yai yai, what a task!

I hadn’t actually planned to clean the house, but I have been in the habit of doing something physical in the mornings. It was too cold to go outside and sitting down to read so early in the day smacked of wanton idleness, so I decided to get rid of the worst of the dust. Well, one thing led to another, and two hours later, I was still working.

This is a small house, and I have various modern cleaning tools at my disposal, so it shouldn’t have taken me very long, but the place needed a thorough cleaning. Apparently, I stopped seeing the dust on the flat surfaces and building up in the corners. Or more to the point, I didn’t want to see because there was nothing I could do (or wanted to do) about it since I was exhausted from my outside activities.

And now I’m exhausted from inside activities.

To be honest, I think all the digging and planting I’ve been doing were easier than cleaning house. Admittedly, everything is brighter now without dust dulling floors and furniture, but still, it was hard work. Now that most of the outside chores are done — only watering my newly sodded lawn and eventually sowing wildflower seeds remain — I should be able to go back to playing house more frequently rather than working at it as I did today.

Wait . . . I just thought of another outside chore I will have to begin doing as soon as the leaves on the neighbors’ trees are gone — blowing leaves off the ornamental rock around my house and garage. I’m not real anxious to attack that job because I have a feeling not all the leaves will blow off since they didn’t on a trial run, but all I can do is the best I (and my tools) can do. The leaf blower blows hard, so that’s not the problem. In fact, on the high setting, it’s enough to blow the rocks around, but some twigs and leaves still remain.

But that’s not a problem for today. Today I just want to bask in righteous exhaustion and the thought of a job well done.

***

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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Taking It Easy

November 3, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Laziness doesn’t pay, at least not for me. Although I’m supposed to water my new lawn every day, yesterday, I refrained — it was too cold and chilly for me to go out, and the high temperatures weren’t going to get very high. I figured when it warmed up today, I could give it a good soaking.

It was a good plan, but plans tend to be overthrown by other plans. As it turned out, I had to work a full day today, so I needed to water before I left. That early, it was much colder than it was yesterday, and all my digits about froze.

I don’t seem to be able to water, either by hand or by sprinkler, without getting soaked. I thought I was being smart by wearing nitrile gloves to keep my hands from getting wet, which did work for that purpose, but those gloves didn’t do anything to stave off the cold.

Luckily, we will have a respite from the cold for several days starting tomorrow. And since I gave the grass a good soaking today, if by any chance I have to miss tomorrow, I’ll be okay.

It’s funny to me that after my dad died, the last person I had any responsibility for, I eschewed every responsibility except for taking care of myself. I didn’t even want a houseplant — it overwhelmed me just thinking of having to care for it. And now here I am, with a house, plants (both indoor and out), a yard and grass. And a job helping to care for an older woman. That’s a lot of responsibility for a person who wants none. But surprisingly, it’s not a problem. I do what I need to do when I need to do it, and then take it easy the rest of the time.

So far so good.

***

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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The Coming Seasons

October 26, 2021 — Pat Bertram

It’s been ten days since the grass was put in, and it’s still alive! Yay! Maybe my brown thumb is gradually turning green. I’ve still been watering the grass every day, but strong winds are bringing in cooler temperatures, so it won’t be long before I switch to every other day, and then gradually fade out as winter pushes its way into my world.

I’m not especially fond of winter, but I have a hunch this year I will appreciate it more than normal — no watering grass and plants, no digging, no landscaping. Except for the watering, I’m mostly done with the digging. My final two hundred bulbs should be here Friday, and after they are planted, all I have to do is watch the forecast for the first snowfall, then scatter my wildflower seeds and tramp them into the ground before the storm hits.

Then it’s all about waiting for spring. Or not. Too much of my life has been about waiting, so perhaps I should change my focus to something beyond my yard and garden. Playing house and cleaning all the corners that have been neglected during the past few months perhaps. Walking, probably. All too often, I was too tired from the gardening chores or my knees too incapacitated to walk this summer, so winter would be a good time to concentrate on mobility. Ooops. But snow! I don’t walk in the snow, so that might not be the best thing to concentrate on. Still, there are my knee exercises to do to make sure they are as strong as possible as I sink deeper into old age.

The only thing worse than waiting is planning, so I’ll be better off not planning what I will do when the yard chores are finished especially since there is a good chance they won’t be finished for a long time. After all, the neighbors on all sides have trees, and somehow most of the leaves end up in my yard. It will be good to have the leaves, but I don’t particularly relish raking them off the grass and blowing them off the rocks. Still, tools are always fun to use, so it will be just a different focus.

It is interesting the way having a yard and spending time in that yard every day makes one cognizant of the seasons in a way that merely staying inside and switching from heat to air-conditioning and back to heat does. Even walking didn’t make me as aware of the seasons, perhaps because I wasn’t as involved with my environs as I am with yardwork.

Next year should be interesting. I’ve dug up about all the weeded areas I could, and those I couldn’t will be sown with wildflower seeds. If my raised garden is built by then, I will have a garden to plant, but if not, I’ll mostly be taking care of what has already been planted. Though, come to think of it, the lure of bedding plants is strong, so I’m sure I’ll find some place for a few. Or even more than a few.

Last night I was thinking about age, brought on by a neighbor’s comment that I was too old to go tent camping, which I might be. But I do think in another decade, I will look back on this year, my first year of unarguable elderliness as a time of relative youth. I mean, look at all I’ve accomplished with the landscaping. Admittedly, I did not lay the sod, the ornamental rocks, or the crushed rock for the pathways, but I have been out there every day doing something to turn my property into a micro estate.

It has been a good experience, and I’m looking forward to seeing where all this takes me in the coming seasons.

***

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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Hatching a New Book

October 25, 2021 — Pat Bertram

I just finished reading a book where a couple moved to an small town where the families of the inhabitants go back generations. As in most stories using this particular scenario, the couple had a hard time fitting in because they were outsiders.

A counterpart of this story is the Hallmark movie version where a big city success goes home to the small town where she was raised and suddenly, she finds everything she’s ever wanted.

Basically, these are the same story, just told from different points of view. The returnee, of course, is welcomed because she is one of them, and left unsaid is the part where if she had been a stranger, things would not have worked out as well for her.

There is a third version of this story, where a person is stranded and finds a home in the town. Bagdad Café and Doc Hollywood are two examples.

When I moved here, I expected the first version to hold true, especially since I’ve lived in small towns before and never found in them a home except what Jeff and I created between the two of us. In fact, when I left the area where Jeff and I had lived for two decades, only one grocery clerk and a librarian bothered to say good-bye. When we left the previous place, no one but our landlady noticed. And the place before that, not even the landlady cared.

Obviously, the second version can’t hold true because I am not coming back to my roots. I have no real roots. My parents left the east coast where they were raised, camped out in Denver to grow their family, then headed on to the west coast where they’d planned to go all along.

I’m also not stranded here accidentally, but it was accidental (perhaps) how it came about. Although I had never signed up with Zillow, they sent me an email one day saying, “This is your new house.” I looked at the photos, and I agreed. It was my house, the one I had been conjuring in my mind, and a person goes where their house is, regardless of what problems she might encounter once she moves in. (I never even saw the house in person before I moved in, which freaked out my real estate agent, but didn’t bother me because . . . well because it was my house.)

Luckily, my story is a happier version of the first example. Although most people who live here have generational roots, some going back to when the town was founded, some people seem more than willing to accept new people, especially if the new people are willing to get involved, such as writing mysteries for local events. There might be undercurrents I am unaware of, but it seems as if this is a town on the cusp of a new identity, no longer dependent solely on agriculture and ancestry, but not yet sure where it is going or where it can go. (Businesses seem reluctant to come here, except for marijuana businesses — those seem quite willing to move here, though some of them are having a hard time getting employees, and some are having a hard time finding housing for the employees they import. One problem with the area is that less than half of the houses are owner occupied, a transiency that makes businesses nervous.)

This changing identity might explain in part the willingness to accept strangers, but the willingness also comes from the long-time newcomers (those who have been here for a decade or more) and from the returned natives (those who left to find a different life, and then returned to look after aged parents).

Despite my acceptance from others, I do think that some of the small town clichés should find their way into my new book, the one that’s currently hatching in my brain. And there certainly should be examples of the way people around here talk: “She’s the sister of my nephew’s ex-wife.” “Her grandfather is my uncle.” “He is the son of my aunt’s sister-in-law’s mother.”

Some of these relationships boggle my mind. I can’t even imagine knowing so much of one’s family tree let alone other people’s. Oddly, despite all the knowledge of one another’s ancestry, no one seems to know anything about the people who lived in this house before 1965 or so. Not that it matters, I can make up my own history for the house, but I am curious about previous tenants. It seems so much an old woman’s house. The owner before me was a man, but he had to move out because it was my house, at least that’s what I jokingly tell him, but both owners before him were old women. One of those women had a relative who was able to help her get grants to upgrade the electricity, the heating, some windows, the plumbing, the roof, leaving the kitchen, the rest of the windows, and stucco work for the previous owner to take care of. But before those women? No one seems to know.

I don’t think I need to go back that far for my story to be as mysterious as I hope it to be. After all, there are other houses in the neighborhood where nefarious folk can live and have lived. (A murder took place in the house across the alley a few months before I moved here.)

And, if I want my story to have an elder-related sub story, then the people should be more contemporary to help emphasize the current issues of the very old. Which means, I have to create the characters and figure out how they fit into the story. Luckily, I have no deadline for finishing the book. I don’t even have a deadline for starting it.

All I know is that I somehow the unique smalltownishness of this place needs to be reflected in the story.

***

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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My Changing Identity

October 16, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Before I bought my house, I rented a room in a house. There were three of us — the owner, another tenant, and me. Sounds so Judge Judyish, doesn’t it? Though truly, my only problem was the owner’s careworker who used up one of my favorite spice mixes. But that was minor. And none of this introduction has anything to do with what I plan to write about except to explain why I watched certain movies.

A television and basic programming came with the room rent, but I didn’t watch until the last few months when it occurred to me that I might never have television programming again. (I actually have two televisions, one hooked up to a DVD player and one hooked up to a VCR, but I don’t have programming and I don’t watch any of the movies I’ve stockpiled.) Anyway, that Christmas, I watched Hallmark movies galore. In fact, I watched so many, I was able to tell when the next twist would come. (For example, twenty minutes before the finish, the couple had a huge misunderstanding, and then, five minutes before the end, they finally found out the truth and made up.)

One of the big drivers of such movies is that because of the main character’s problems or her parent’s problems, she has to leave her power job and adopted big city behind and move back to her hometown.

It always seemed such a contrived plot, especially since once she was there, her values suddenly changed, going from a power player to a more laid-back lifestyle. I didn’t have that experience moving here because I’ve always been something of a small-town person even though I grew up in Denver. Back then, though, there wasn’t so much driving every which way — we all more or less lived in our parishes and congregations in our own discrete neighborhoods. Each move I made as an adult took me to smaller towns, except, of course, when I went to look after my father in California, and even that conglomerate of three linked towns had a small-town feel, mostly, I think, because again, I mostly lived in one particular neighborhood, the only one close to the desert.

What I am discovering, however, that despite my feeling at home in this small town, the movie scenario, while trite, it isn’t all that contrived. I noticed that when I moved into a place of my own — a very nice place, probably nicer than I had any right to expect — my sense of self began to change. I was no longer one step away from being homeless but instead was fully homed. My habits changed and I became more of a neatnik than I ever imagined. (Well, except for my office. I still have piles of paper on my desk, heaped blanket and pillows on my daybed, and an empty cup on the bedside table.) I also became houseproud — proud that this house belongs to me as well as being proud of the way it looks and the way I keep it up.

I’ve settled into that version of me — the houseproud one — and now it looks as if I will have to rethink who I am based on the looks of the grounds the house sits on. I’m more of a dirt and weeds with a few scraggly flowers kind of person. And now . . . well, now I’m not. I’m the proud owner of an — almost — landscaped property with reddish paths meandering through brilliant green grass and skirting around bushes that are still too small to be noticeable. But one day those bushes will grow up, the wildflower sections will bloom, and I will live in a showplace.

This all seems so . . . not me. And yet, obviously, it is.

I just need to get my head around that.

***

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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The Grass is Greener

October 15, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Today was one of those special days you cannot plan. Or maybe you can, but I sure didn’t. When I was unexpectedly given the day off, I’d planned to go to the library, run a few errands, then work on clues for the mystery at the museum. I got as far as going to the library. Then things changed.

I noticed that the “open” sign was lit at my mechanic’s shop, which is a rarity since he’s been dealing with The Bob and various Bob related side effects for almost a year. I stopped by to see how he was doing, and he seems to be doing well. I asked if he was ready to work on my brakes. When he said yes, I asked when would be a good time. He said, “What about now?”

So I left the car walked home, lugging my books.

A little after that, a trailer full of sod was pulled in front of my house.

A couple of workers started laying the grass. And wow! That grass sure is greener on my side of the fence!

By now, most people’s grass has started to fade, which made mine look fake.

But it’s not fake, and that sort of worries me. All along, I wanted a relatively easy yard to take care of, but I thought one patch of grass in the front would look nice and be easy enough to take care of. But eek! A local landscapers had a couple of pallets of sod left over, and they asked my contractor if he thought I wanted it. I figured a couple of pallets might be a bit more than I wanted, but if so, I thought they could keep laying the sod until they ran out.

Well, they kept laying it down and laying it down, and not only did those rolls of grass cover the front yard, but also all down the side of the house as well as the patch of yard I was going to turn into a wildflower meadow. (Never fear, those seeds will be used to fill in other places in the yard to give it some color.)

There is still more grass left, so tomorrow, they will lay it down where I planned to put a parking space. Why not? I don’t need a parking space and if a rare visitor came and needed to park there for a bit, well, it shouldn’t hurt the grass. And anyway, I have the grass and I don’t have the gravel for the parking space.

All that grass looks great, but now I’m locked into watering and mowing that meandering lawn forever. Perhaps not forever, but certainly for as long as I live here. One mitigating factor is that the grass is so very thick that any weeds will have a hard time finding a place to roost, so just like that (a snap of my fingers) any future weeding will be relegated to a few garden areas.

As for my car . . . apparently, the parts company sent the wrong master brake cylinder. Although it’s listed as the right part, it’s missing a hole or has an extra hole (something about clocking?). Anyway, the car still is not fixed. Maybe Monday.

***

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 Tale of Two Mysteries

September 25, 2021 — Pat Bertram

I’m supposed to be figuring out a mystery for a “Nite at the Museum” event at the local historical museum, but instead, the bare bones of my next book are poking at me. Not that I know what will happen in that story any more than the I know what will happen at the museum, but I am getting the feel for the story — a woman (Pat!) buys a house years after the death of her husband in an effort to build a new life for herself. As she digs around her yard, cleaning things up, she finds remnants of a previous owner’s life. She gets curious about the woman, and tries to find out what happened to her, but everyone she talks to has a different story. Some think she went to a nursing home in a nearby town. Some think she went to live with a relative in another state. As Pat continues to dig and learns more about the woman’s life, she discovers that the woman was much like her — widowed, alone, elderly, no children, few financial resources, and no one to really care what happened to her. That’s when Pat ramps up her search for woman — because whatever fate the woman met, so might the hapless Pat.

I have no idea if there is a book in these musings or if they are only in my mind to keep me from thinking about what I am supposed to be thinking of — the museum murder.

We have a basic plot for the murder, where the murdered couple (The Crows) were put in a hotel room at the Gardner House that someone else wanted. That someone else had stolen an artifact (or been given it to dispose of it), and hid it in the hotel until the heat was off and now person came back to get the artifact. Why it was necessary to get the pipe that particular night, I haven’t yet figured out, so if you have any ideas, I’d be glad to hear them. Apparently, Mrs. Crow wakes up and sees the thief. The thief swoops down on her, and when she awakes again, she finds herself dead.

What fascinates me about writing is that once a scenario presents itself, research almost always helps bring the story to life. (This has been called the gift of the library gods.)

In this case, research brought me to the Medicine Hat Bundle, which included a ceremonial pipe and a buffalo horn, and was the most sacred possession of the Northern Cheyenne. After a dispute with the Keeper of the Sacred Medicine Hat Bundle, the pipe disappeared until 1908 when a woman named Hattie Gott acquired it from a Southern Cheyenne called Burnt All Over. Hattie Gott donated the artifact to the Oklahoma Historical Society in 1911. The significance of the pipe was finally discovered around 1997, and from what I can tell, it’s been returned to the Northern Cheyenne.

So my dilemma for The Murder of Crows is how the pipe wound up here (Southern Cheyenne territory) at the turn of the twentieth century, eight years before it ended up in Oklahoma, why someone hid it in the Gardner House, and why reclaiming it was so urgent as to necessitate killing the occupants of the room where it was hidden.

I suppose it could have been stolen again, either on purpose (knowing what it was), or accidentally (not knowing what it was). I also need to have some idea of what the thief hoped to gain by owning the pipe. Maybe holding it for ransom if the person knew what it was? Or desperate to get rid of it and the bad luck that followed it if the person didn’t know what it was? Although the pipe was supposed to be good luck for the Northern Cheyenne, it brought bad luck to other folk. It’s probable that the pipe was placed in the room previously, and only now has the person found a chance to return to the area to retrieve it.

So confusing!

No wonder it’s easier to think about a novel I might or might not write in some eventless future rather than thinking about a mystery event I have to create in the very near future.

Like before the end of the month. Eek!

***

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

Posted in culture, house, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . 11 Comments »

A Place That’s Uniquely My Own

September 23, 2021 — Pat Bertram

It’s hard for people to understand one another because each of us come with particular problems, needs, and perhaps even assets that help define who we are. If we don’t take all that background information into consideration, we can never truly understand another person’s point of view. That’s a good thing for me to remember as a writer because it might make for a deeper character portrayal or put the story in a different light, but in real life, it’s not so interesting.

I talked to someone yesterday who harangued me for quite a while about my keeping the same contractor. The word “sucker” was even bandied about. To be honest, most people don’t approve of this particular choice, but they tend to keep their opinions to themselves. And admittedly, they do have a point since the contractor is way behind on the work he’s promised to do, but that’s not the issue here.

The person I talked to is young (well, younger), married, strong, has an extended family in the vicinity, has lived in the same area his whole life so he has a solid place in the community and knows where to go and who to call to get things done that he can’t do himself. He probably also has people who owe him favors from years back.

Then there’s me. Old. Alone. No family in the area. No ties to the community except those I’ve managed to secure in the past couple of years. No idea how to take care of a house or where to find honorable people who will get things done.

Not surprisingly, the only person who agrees with me about sticking with the same contractor is also an older widow with a house to take care of and no family nearby. She knows, because she’s been there, how almost impossible it is to find someone who will do all that is necessary, and who will respond to calls and concerns, and who will show up in an emergency. All of that is as important as the work getting done.

I do get frustrated at times, but the truth is, in some odd way, it doesn’t really matter. The work will get done. Or it won’t. Someone told me that the Chinese have a proverb that when your house is done, you will die. At the rate I’m going, I will live forever. (And, since I’m paraphrasing proverbs, the Irish have one they’ve used since the 1300s about better the devil you know.)

The other thing that’s hard to admit to anyone but myself is that I’m not sure I want the work to be finished. Certainly, I want the jobs that are started to be completed because I get tired of tripping over things that are in the way, but there is an excitement to having people come and work on my place and even offer suggestions. (Some of the unfinished projects are ideas they’ve come up with that I would never have thought of and that will vastly improve the accessibility of the property as I age.) It’s almost . . . familial . . . having someone else care about and get invested in creating a safe and attractive place for me to live out my final years.

And when the work is all done, that part of my life will be finished.

Perhaps these are simply excuses for keeping the status quo, but they’re my excuses, coming from a place and a point of view and a set of requirements that’s uniquely my own.

***

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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I Dig Digging

September 20, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Lots more digging today! I did my morning stint after I came home from the mechanic’s shop without any work being done on my car. (The shop was closed, so I hope he’s not having another setback.)

I can’t do much digging at a time, only a strip of one or two feet by eight feet because the soil is compacted clay held together by the dense roots of Bermuda grass. To be honest, I don’t care how little I do. I’m just delighted to be able to do any physical work at my age. Apparently, I am considered elderly, which isn’t as bad as being called an old woman. I mean I am one, but still, it’s demoralizing to be defined in such a way. In my world, I’ve never been this age before, so it’s new to me. In fact, this is the youngest I will ever be, and besides, I still have the whole rest of my life ahead of me. Does that sound old-womanish? No, I didn’t think so.

But I digress.

After I did my morning dig, I relaxed a bit, so when the mail came with a package of plants that needed to be put to bed, I was raring to go. Luckily, it’s a lovely day with a cool breeze, so it didn’t matter that I was out working just after noon. (Last week, the afternoons were hot enough to give me heatstroke if I did anything outside.)

The plants are magnus echinacea. I ordered one plant a year ago, and it seems to be doing well, so I thought I’d try a few more. They are in their new home now. Since they don’t like to be transplanted, I hope they like where I put them.

One other gardening project I did today was start a notebook at the suggestion of one of my gardening readers. I got an empty binder, which I will fill with the planting guides that come with my purchases, descriptions of the plants, location in my yard, and whatever else I need to keep track of. The yard is a good size, but it’s not so big that I couldn’t keep track of all my plantings, but there is that elderly thing, so who knows when the memory will go. Having a ready guide to my various gardens should make up for any forgetfulness.

I’m glad I didn’t get a house with a yard that was already landscaped. I think it would have been too much for me to keep up at the beginning — it was complicated enough getting to know the care and feeding of a house without dealing with someone else’s idea of what a yard should be. This way, I get to figure it out as I go along. And if I eventually decide it’s too much and let it go, well, it will only be myself I’m letting down and not some master gardener.

Tomorrow will be another cool day before we hit the nineties again, so more digging is in my forecast.

***

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

Posted in dealing with old age, gardening, house, life. Tags: , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Dreaming a Garden

August 25, 2021 — Pat Bertram

After Jeff died, I did many things that ordinarily I wouldn’t have done, such as taking dance classes and joining a hiking club, because I worried that otherwise I’d stagnate, that I’d become the crazy cat lady sans cats, the one who was so alone that she’d be dead a week before anyone ever noticed she was gone.

Even after I moved here, I kept up with socializing, and I did rather well for a year until The Bob came and changed everything. Now I spend most of my time by myself, with only my job, a weekly visit to the library, and a monthly get together with the art guild to take me out of myself.

Perhaps I am on the way to stagnation as I feared, but the one saving grace is my interest in gardening, which means I won’t be the catless cat lady, I’ll be that old lady who is only seen when she is outside working on her garden. There are people around who, I am sure, would make sure I don’t devolve into that woman, but more to the point, there will be the garden.

I’m still such a neophyte that no matter what I do, a percentage of what I plant ends up dead, but that is not discouraging me. In fact, just today, I received a mailer from a plant company for things to plant this fall. Cold hardy hibiscus. Carpet phlox. Oriental poppies. Shade loving astilbe. Even the names are evocative! My ability to keep plants alive in both the burning heat of mid-summer and the bitter cold of mid-winter isn’t what I would like it to be, though I wonder at times if the problem is solely with me and if perhaps the soil, the plants themselves, or the seller share some of the blame. There’s only one company I ever purchased plants from who sent plants that are all still alive a year later. The plants from other companies don’t fare as well; in fact, all but two of the plants I got from a company that specializes in prairie plants never made it through the winter.

Still, I try. It seems to me as if my gardening expertise is a lesson in hope over reality. But I continue to dream anyway. And as long as I can dream, even if it is only dreaming a garden, I won’t stagnate. Oh, I might well become the neighborhood crazy lady, though in my own head and in my own garden, I’ll be active and spirited and very much alive.

One of these days, too, I’ll get back into writing, though I haven’t yet thought of a story or characters I’d be willing to live with for the year or so it will take to write the book.

Meantime, it’s a matter of deciding what plants to order and where to put them.

***

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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