A shrivelled up garden!

30th July 2018

Still on a roller coaster!

Two weeks after surgery, and I am getting used to a new reality. I have had some scary moments and some laughs. Family has pulled around me and brought me through the worst times of my life. Surgery is healing but it’s all painful. We’ve just had the hottest weather since UK records began and I’ve tried inside and outside to stay regulated. But it’s hard going and I’ve scared a lot of people, with unexpected reactions to things, and our plans diverging so much.
Outside we have beautiful hot orange calla lilies and wild eryngiums, or thistles, creating new corners to excavate. And the garden needs excavation when I am fit again. For now, I just have to look at what I can’t do...

Surgery with MS is no simple thing. Even the medics were scared by my reaction, and I have a different diagnosis of intolerance no one predicted. Opioids are quite dangerous but for me they were a game changer. Never again! I have absolutely no tolerance for them and it nearly didn’t get sorted. Then in later discussion, you find a family intolerance and it all makes sense.

It’s two weeks now and it all still hurts but patience willing, recovery is going to happen. Summer holidays see the desertion of the UK for far-flung destinations. I wish that was us, but I’m being patient. The kids have been following a job chart so I’ll be broke by next week. My mum has been a star, feeding us and chivvying me into my new normality for now.

I forgot to say, the greenhouse was blown over, causing great consternation - largely missed by me - and the drought was followed by a day of rain, so much more like the summer holidays of old than the 32 degrees. We have to look at the garden again and think of how it can work. Not a quick fix, but a life work! Gulp!

Blimey!

This image was sent to me from Russia, from a clinic helping my
friend with MS. I send my blog back with Love! 

12 hours and counting!

I had that last MRI, that one that had contrast, and nearly tipped me over...

I was lying flat on my back, with my legs raised over a box, and two heavy mechanical blankets over my chest and tummy, earplugs and ear defenders on. Easy Peazy! And the fan blowing cold air into the tunnel caused my legs to feel like I was being sprayed with ice!

As I say, I had ear plugs in and they placed ear defenders over my ears. Then the bed moved in and out a few times, before somebody spoke to me? Mumble, mumble, hold your breath till mumble mumble! What?!? And then the tube moved again. Breathe out, mumble, mumble, hold your breath. Eh?!? This happened a few times and I squeezed the help thing.

What’s up? I am freezing and I can’t understand the instructions! Or hold my breath that long??? We’ll put the sound up.

A blanket was draped over my feet. And a few more goes of moving me and giving instructions I couldn’t understand fully, either they gave up on me or got something usable. And the bed was rolled out of the tunnel seconds before I pressed the damn button again, or threw the really heavy mat things off!

Fifteen minutes? That wasn’t fifteen bleeping minutes and I was so close to screaming. I didn’t have - I was not even close - anything close to a panic attack. I have friends whose panic and anxiety is very real, but today I really came close to understanding the escape reflex that they must get. Hopefully, the plastic surgeon now has the images he needs and I never have to go through that again!

Silence is Golden ?

Dates are a blur, 2018

Operation is Looming...

I go into hospital tomorrow so keep your fingers crossed for me!

I hadn't anticipated being able to post anything today as I had an MS appointment booked... but a last-minute MRI is sending me to the surgery hospital. God, I love our NHS!

So I am sitting here tappity-tap and posting some lovely pics! (Ok some are not so lovely but you know me? We are mid work with no money, no summer holiday, and I have a six-week recovery from my tummy tuck and boob job a la Kardashians!) Send me all those positive thoughts for what to do with the rubbishy bits of the garden (I have six weeks of thinking time and writing my book)!

leftover building rubble...

garden detritus...

My 100th Post!!!

My 100th Post!




Have you made it this far with me? I seriously don't write these blogs on a regular basis or with a money making scheme in my mind (I could populate the blog with adverts): and sometimes I have lots to discuss and lots of it has to do with avoidance techniques and current preoccupations. I wish I could give you garden progress in regular bursts but life has thrown lots of hiccups in my direction this year.
I had planned to do a drawing of my garden when I started my blog but it has fallen by the wayside... but I watched an interview with Piet Oudolf the other night, and he does drawings in such an organic way, I realised I don't really have to do anything more technical than tracing paper and pen.

M y budget hasn’t increased in three years as without a regular job or a plan to increase my income, we can’t afford to spend very much at all. As it is despite drooling over friends’ dramatic voyages and holidays, I am not going to be having two weeks’ holiday anytime soon. A significant anniversary comes up next year so maybe 2019 is going to be better in all sorts of ways? I’m going to keep my eyes on recycling websites for things to make landscaping interventions and hope that those posts come up at points when we can move quickly on them, and enlist help from friends.

But for the moment, we are navigating over building rubble and perching the furniture we have on the grass. Twenty-first century problems and dilemmas...I shall aim to make light of the overgrown areas, one day, and enjoy the space we do have, in as humble a way as we can. I enter lots of draws or posts by gardening companies to see if we can enlist some help with the bigger plan but it’s like raffles and tombola, I never win. Maybe one day... but first I’ll write my book...

MS is not being benevolent to me at the moment. It takes on a kind of MonSter on my shoulder, hitting me with insomnia in clusters and keeping me from doing things as in this unprecedented heat my energy is so low: and in preop mode, my vitamins had to be discontinued so Vitamin D is being absorbed in small sunbathes (not exposing anything of my trunk) and we are probably not eating enough vegetables to get Magnesium and B vitamins...

Our garden still has 4 sheds, 2 of them becoming more decrepit by the minute and they are all storing random things. I have tried selling stuff, in a number of different ways, but am now going to give to charities and friends. Stuff we don’t need and can’t use needs to be disposed of before we end up hurting ourselves or stuff descends on us from on high. Which ironically happened in the dark last night...

I am off to my oldest’s school play after lunch which leads me on to... I am going to use my new greenhouse for propagating and get some things into the plan!

I shall illustrate with some of my favourite pictures from my 100 blogs as well as some moments from the last few days. May your grass turn green again soon x

Avoiding the football!

Garden centre Astromeria

Purple versions of my orange ones..

7th July 2018

Football Fever!

Slugs in modern literature..

U

Believe it or not, I thought England were playing tomorrow... but it explains the pleasantly busy gardens at Wimpole when we stopped off for lunch. We had been to a rather lovely garden centre at Waresley near Wimpole and decided to stop and eat our lunch at the gardens in Wimpole. A short wander through the shady woodland walk took us into the walled garden where I was in my element snapping true favourite perennials.

Also the TV last night featured one of my gardening heroes, Piet Oudolf who had been given a special garden area at Hampton Court. (I wanted to go but the heat would have been unbearable.) And the gardens at Wimpole are celebrating the input of John Soane, all designers who have been incredibly important to design history for such different reasons. The girls liked the compost facts about how the gardeners speeded up the composting process!

I remembered seeing the Rudyard Kipling quote about slugs when we were at Wimpole before, so I include it today. We got home in time to see the end of the football. Joys, there will be more to watch of that despite our disinterest!

Wimpole versions

Outside the gardener's cottage, Wimpole

Bees on the echinacea

MS and Hospitals...

5th July 2018

My MS

I have certain symptoms - things that don't vary from other peoples experiences with the MonSter - that I know what I am dealing with, but unexpected heat and unexpected stress has made my MS play nasty tricks on me. Flushes from my medication and insomnia on the hottest nights of the year are messing with me and making life unbearable - but that in itself makes me sound unlike myself, as I can't remember saying such a thing in recent memory.

Surgeons have asked whether my MS will be affected by surgery but I haven't got a clue - it may or may not go haywire, but the heat we are experiencing just now could be equally to blame. At least I'll be able to pull the air conditioner card out if needed as that was a purchase we made in the early MS diagnosis days which can be utilised to cool down the house, and the nurses said to me yesterday there isnt air con in the hospital, apart from the theatres.

I am mostly a calm individual, except when the kids are playing up, and I always look for positives in my glass-half-full life. But I feel so lethargic and glum, it's not easy to do that at the moment. I worked yesterday and was wiped out after, making me question what I am truly fit for. People post pictures of exotic holidays and I used to yearn for the escape from the day-to-day but if a heatwave here wipes me out, then Caribbean adventures are not going to help.

Our sun umbrella has fallen over out of its setting and I am not strong enough to fix it. I am feeling tingly from head to toe, meaning the watering cans are too heavy to lift and even using the strimmer feels like hard work today. While ignoring the dried out plants, I can share the unexpected blooms. I am on holiday from now...

Insomnia and Lumps...

4th July 2018

Being Pedantic!

It has kept me awake this one. On one of the hottest nights and after watching the England team celebrating getting through this World Cup on penalties! First time ever!
But it's annoying the pedantic nature of me: it doesn't feel like I have a lump! This 'lump', this precancerous thingie, is not how I always thought I should look out for a strange protuberance suddenly appearing on my body, because it isn't. A protuberance that is, it's more of a balloon under the skin and more to the point, the nasty stuff isn't in Tommy Tumour or Cyril Cyst but inside the milk ducts, which are to be removed along with the nipple during the mastectomy surgery and those don't stick out or appear 'lumpy'.
That perplexes me as it's not the terminology you'd expect and possibly why so much breast cancer goes unnoticed until it's too late? I also had been linking it all to the matter of breast feeding, which as a two-times elderly primigravida, I attempted with varying successes twice and pursued more vigorously after my MS diagnosis when told it could lessen the progression of my MS.
So I suggest its a language quirk that needs addressing and changing. Watch out for strange bubbles instead? I have had slight pain but I have been known to have a high pain threshold so that doesn't help much either...
I must go back to bed and sleep through some of tonight. To all you insomniacs out there, I feel your pain.

July is going to stay hot?!?

3rd July 2018

Preop Ponderings

We are leaving World Cup qualifiers with some huge teams knocked out. I don’t follow football but I can understand the consternation. 

Nobody likes uncertainty and I am entering this month with trepidation, not for the uncertainty, but the actualisation of something I really didn’t see coming. My preop session was today. I was attached to the ECG, measured and weighed, checking my BMI and my heart rate and blood pressure (reassuringly still low), oh and swabbed to make sure I won’t bring any nasties into the hospital. At least three days in hospital in the middle of our unexpected heat wave, and six weeks of not driving and a slow recovery. Please somehow can we fast forward? Now I have thirteen days of anticipation and buildup of all manner of worst case scenarios in my already vivid imagination. I am watching new plants shrivel in the heat and I am wondering if I can put my inactivity to use and come up with something good? I won’t be digging much in the summer and my plants need protecting, and my weeds need annihilating before the wilderness takes over. 

I have to say I am lucky: I have somebody to look after me and make sure I get through this. My mum is coming down to help for a week so camping in the book shed! Maybe setting up the small tent?  And having lots of fire pit barbecues? But we’re busy till then as it’s end of term a few days after so lots of things happening...