What’s New

November 8, 2024 — Pat Bertram

I seem to be on a blog streak lately: every two months on the 8th without fail I’ve managed to find some words to post. Perhaps bimonthly three times in a row isn’t much in the grand scheme of the world, the galaxy, the universe, but it’s a lot for me. I’m lucky in that there isn’t much to write about. I lead a quiet, sane life (at least it feels sane to me) without a lot of trauma or excitement, but that suits me well. I’ve had enough of both to last the rest of my life.

Oh, there are some things of concern, such as a couple of visitors of the small rodent kind and a crumbling corner of my foundation (for some reason, that particular corner decided it didn’t want to have anything to do with the rest of the house, so it went walkabout) but mostly, I (and my house) have been doing well.

So, what’s new? Snow! Lots and lots of snow. I haven’t seen so much snow in years. In fact, I think we’ve had more snow the past couple of days than all last winter. It’s been so warm that I’d been procrastinating on cleaning up my garden areas for fall, mowing one last time, readying the ground for planting wildflower seeds (which in previous years I did before the first snow) thinking I had plenty of time to do the work, but no. Snow!!

Luckily, they got the foundation concreted in before the snow started, but it will probably be a while before they can replace the dirt and redo the landscaping around the house. It’s ornamental rock, so it’s not much of a problem, and it’s out of the way so I won’t be putting myself in danger, but they might have to wait until the snow melts and the excavation area dries out. Or not. What do I know. And anyway, it’s not that cold, so I doubt the snow will be around for very long.

There isn’t much snow in the above picture of my ramp, but the snow that’s there is just from the early hours this morning. Yesterday, I shoveled the ramp twice. Each time the snow was about six or eight inches deep, so you can imagine how deep the snow would have been without all that work! And without the melt from late yesterday afternoon when the snow turned to rain.

After this storm passes, the days will warm up (though the nights will be colder than they have been), so I’m sure I’ll still be able to do the fall cleanup I’d planned, assuming, of course, I feel like it.

Right now, what I feel like is a cup of hot tea, a warm blanket, and a book to read, so goodbye for another couple of months! It was nice connecting with you.

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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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What’s to Come

September 2, 2022 — Pat Bertram

We had a lot of rain Wednesday night, so yesterday morning I took the opportunity to start clearing out some flower beds in preparation for fall and winter. The lilac garden particularly needed work because the tomato plants I’d planted in the large space in front of the bushes went wild and completely buried the still-small lilac bushes. I trimmed back the cherry tomato plants, and then spent an hour or so untangling the bindweed from the lilacs, which I hadn’t been able to do because of the tomato forest.

Surprisingly, despite the neglect and competition, the lilacs are all doing well. I’d planned to plant the tomatoes in my raised garden next year, but now I’m thinking I will plant cherry tomatoes in pots to keep them from taking over the flower beds. Better yet, considering the long, ropy branches, maybe I’ll plant them in hanging pots.

This morning, the ground was still damp enough that I decided to continue my pre-fall cleanup. I hadn’t been able to get to my lilies to weed them because of all the wildflowers that grew in that area, but with most of the flowers spent, I was able to do a lot of clean up — pulling weeds, weedy grasses, and of course, the dying wildflowers.

I need to get grass seed to fill in the spots in the lawn that seem to be dead. There should be plenty of seed left to extend the lawn into the flower bed so that it will be easier to get to the lilies. Since that area is toward the back of the yard, I won’t mind as much if the weedy grasses encroach on the expensive grass — either way, I will be able to mow the area, making it easier to work that flower bed. (And end up with a few fewer feet of ground to weed!)

As I water and weed, I spend a lot of time looking at the garden, trying to figure out what works best for me and what doesn’t, and from a weed-pulling standpoint, I enjoy the bushy flowers like echinacea more than the single-stemmed varieties because they don’t seem to get as weedy as other plants. I must admit, though, that I did enjoy the wildflower gardens and the ever-changing blooms. My problem with the wildflowers was the difficulty in weeding as well as trying to control the foxtail grass that seemed to grow even better than the wildflowers, so perhaps the wildflowers would be best in the raised garden.

And oh, the wild four o’clocks. They never did well, never got the mounds of flowers they were supposed to, but I just found out they didn’t need to be watered much. I was going to move them to a place where they wouldn’t get watered when I watered my grass, but apparently, they don’t do well as a transplant. Considering that the plant went dormant for a couple of years, I’m not sure it’s something to worry about.

I also don’t think I’ll have to worry about planting more Love Lies Bleeding amaranth — apparently, it readily seeds itself. I like it, at least sometimes, when the garden itself decides what to grow. It saves me a lot of trouble.

I’d also considered not planting more moonflowers, but they do well here, and since it’s next to the fence, and since my neighbor likes it, it seems a good thing to replant, though it, too, might reseed itself, saving me the trouble. (Though, truly, it was no trouble at all to throw a few seeds on the ground and give them a bit of water.)

I realize there’s nothing particularly interesting in this post. It’s mainly for me, reminders of what’s to come in future seasons and what I need to do to ensure that coming.

***

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?

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