Sunny September!

Smallest Daughter's plan

Oldest Daughter's plan – See the symmetry?

25th September 2018

The sun has got his hat on!And he has shaken off my glums... I have to apologise for my mood when I drafted my last blog but insomnia does that to me! I couldn’t see the good that surrounds me and I was very hacked off. I’ve had serious surgery and no one promised me it would be easy, in fact I was warned - and my reaction and experiences after the op when I wasn’t myself - should have prepared us all for a major slump. And the fact that I’ve only had a couple of wobbles is pretty good. 

So it’s onwards and upwards. Even bits around the house are showing improvement. Hubby grouted the tiles in the new bathroom, the render has been sealed and lots of plants seem to be thriving being neglected, so that must be my mantra for next year. Let it grow and see what comes? If I prune it, berries will come. We have lots to do but I will try and curb my impatience and enjoy the good bits of what we have.

The girls drew little plans one day I was wiped out and they have requested to design and build a flower bed with a cherry tree and poppies in. Well I have poppy seeds from Branklyn Gardens to plant and maybe I can stretch to a cherry tree if I shop wisely? We can put this new bed in the front garden and it will benefit the passersby. I will just avoid ingesting any of the seeds in future given my opium reaction. These poppies are for viewing!

Big chunks of the tree trunk behind the shed have also been attacked with the chainsaw and the compost bin we free-cycled for apples has been filled. I think we knew the garden was a project but didn’t think it would have to be on a slow burner. C’est la vie!

Expletives rule!

Small hours of a Sunday in September 2018

Excruciating pain making me grumble!

I am struggling at the moment as nothing seems to be improving, much as I’d like to believe it. I have just spent six hours willing myself to sleep with little success. I am in lots of pain, 8 nearly 9 weeks after surgery and I’ve come closer to understanding people who give up and take their own lives. I won’t - I’m a coward - but I have seen into that black hole and it’s scary. My surgery wasn’t minor and my recovery is slow but it’s getting boring that my answer is sleeping during the day and insomnia at night. 

I have new lumps and bumps from the surgery but the scary red scars are fading. I want life to get back to normal, but what’s normal to an MSer is miles different to anybody without an auto-immune condition. Fatigue is a huge stumbling block as is my inability to lift the paddles in the automatic car we lease for me. I can’t imagine getting it off the drive anytime soon. Which limits me incredibly when my step count is so lowered during this recovery.

Six weeks is the recovery time they gave me and I thought that was conservative but the reality has been worse. I have managed days out which I’ve blogged about but the recovery from those is stringing out to days lost and lethargy to get out of the hole is getting to me. My brother sent me some Royal jelly and with my other vitamins, it seemed to be helping but I now think it’s a placebo effect. My dust allergy seems to have disappeared too, so I obviously have been too absorbed in this recovery to continue with sneezes and snuffles - or is it in self preservation blowing my nose hurts as well at the moment? Let’s take that away - the surgery hurts enough?

Sorry for the pity party but it’s hard to be positive. My neuro thinks I should be working but I am struggling to get my self a job, and my finances are looking dire without one. Maybe the presence of this blog is too easily found if you search my name, but I’m not going to lie about the last eleven years being easy or brush my health under a carpet. I just want to do something interesting that won’t send me catatonic with boredom.
Pity party over? Who knows...

Royal Jelly I bought here which
has orange juice in? Eek

Zen at Kew 2018

Dragonfly at Kew 2018

Kew Gardens, September 2018

18th September, 2018

More walking and the kids did double!

We went to Kew Gardens with friends at the weekend, and I am still recovering! It was mind-blowing, exhausting and the kids did double the distance we did. They also spent a long time in the children's play area and until we found them we didn't realise they loved lentils so much!

Lentils!

Amazing colours and foliage everywhere, and don’t forget the dragons! We walked to the Japanese Pagoda, and we walked round the Zen Gardens, But with four not yet teenagers we didn’t stop long for contemplation anywhere.

The glass houses are astonishing and the temperatures hit me but only when we came outside again.

I wasn’t expecting to see Piranhas either, but we did! They are ugly looking creatures too, and grumpy looking. I couldn’t get over the many hands tempting fate at the pond edges but hey they aren’t the vicious version. So that’s okay then...
We had a picnic by a rather stunning sculpture and hidden from busyness...

The step counter was on because I wanted to track this day and at 12,000 steps wandering round Kew was significantly more steps than I’ve done in all my recovery. But what a day!

September Artists rock!

September and School is back...
One thing that was very apparent on our visit to Jupiter Artlands was that the balance of gender in the creation of art is starting to equalize. The pieces are equally striking, disturbing and provocative whoever creates them. In

some ways perhaps the path to equality has seen female artists choose to use very emotive concepts in order to produce artworks which evoke an emotional and visual connection to the work?

I certainly felt that about some of the sculptures of the small girls whose faces are hidden: what would we see on their faces if we could see them? Is that part of the strength of the pieces – to allow the viewer to project their own faces?
The collected river samples all looked too clear. We wanted to find the flawed sample with cloudy sediment. Or I did...
The enormous silver shoe was also a fabulous subversion of a domestic object – pots and pans of all sizes – making an incredibly vertiginous female shoe. Again a female artist. My husband said it took him quite a while to see what the original objects were.
A lot of the pieces we lingered at were by female artists, and as a mum to two girls it is important that they see female role models in the world. One daughter is already proclaiming a desire to be an artist, the other a chef so lets hope they enter their careers with a determination that women are equal to men instead of having to work harder than everybody else to succeed.
My girls have joined both football and rugby clubs this year! Go girls!

Gardening within liMitS: Freecycle Enterprise!

Gardening within liMitS: Freecycle Enterprise!: 9th September, 2018 Apple Harvest! I whiled away a lunchtime in the hairdresser the other day, found a long-lost coat (I left it sev...

Freecycle Enterprise!

9th September, 2018

Apple Harvest!

I whiled away a lunchtime in the hairdresser the other day, found a long-lost coat (I left it several cuts ago!) and found myself looking at a part of Sissinghurst'sWhite Garden. Some of that is an idea for our great expanses of areas needing activity – ie the concrete area that was dug up to improve our drainage in February... I just need to locate some paving slabs on Freecycle/FB recycling sites – Ive been looking, believe me, but logistically I have to be fully recovered from my surgery. Every week brings a new level of being back to pre-surgery me.

A surprise has bloomed!

I advertised our dropped apples on the local Freecycle FB site this morning, jokingly added that I needed a compost bin and by four o’clock I had a compost bin, filled with the windfalls, slightly less apples on the tree and stewed rhubarb and apple ready for dinner. Result!
And our house is ready for its paint, which was delayed by all matter of calamities and catastrophes this year. Sealer has now been applied all round the house, with a colour hopefully going on over the next couple of weeks.

And having set a husband and Squeaky free for an afternoon stroll round Wymondley Wood, my oldest has got the lawnmower out and is trimming the grass areas free of decaying apples. All in all a successful Sunday!

Jupiter Artlands

August 2018

Jupiter Artland 

Life Mounds Charles Jencks

We were en route to Dunbar to see friends when I asked them for recommendations for garden visits.

My friend knows my interests well and suggested Jupiter Artlands, and so after a few aborted attempts to discuss it, it was finally agreed and online tickets purchased. I was convinced we had to have tickets purchased before rocking up, but I might be wrong... and there are carers tickets as well as disabled so we ended up paying for only the kids. Result! Especially as I paid, or did I?...

Hubby did his usual bit of not using my blue badge and we must have walked through the spacious reserved area several times over the afternoon. Hey ho! We’ll know for another time.

Life Mounds Charles Jencks

Husband across the reflective water

Squeaky points...

The Rose Walk Pablo Bronstein

And I have a feeling we will go back. Jupiter Artlands is currently having its 10-year anniversary, and I recognized the wonderful Charles Jencks’ curving landscape of grassy mounds and reflective water. We actually ended up spending a lot longer in the Artlands than we thought we would but I was having a better day with less pain and it meant we were able to follow the curving paths and see a lot of the current artworks and a ghost trail of artworks that have been exhibited over the ten years. Refreshingly, sculptures can be clambered over and examined from all different angles.

Weeping Girls Laura Ford

The Temple of Apollo Ian Hamilton Findlay
I make no apologies for this
instance of placing ourselves
in the artwork.

Ian Hamilton Findlay's Xth Muse

Landscape with Gun and Tree
 Cornelia Parker

The kids loved the discovery aspect of finding sculptures among the trees and borrowing my camera to take their own arty shots – in fact, I went through the over 100 pics and I couldn’t remember which ones were mine! It also means you will see some of me for the blog. 

The path under the trees sometimes had roots, making it a bit less friendly for a chair-user but they may have had motorized chairs available – they seemed to have made lots accessible but not all. I was struggling with stairs on the holiday but it wasn’t going to stop me, only slow me down. And I did visit an upstairs gallery, climbing very slowly I admit.

An afternoon snack of sandwiches and a treat of cakes later and it felt like a perfect holiday afternoon. 

Rivers Tania Kovats
I loved the peaceful setting here

Inside the Rivers boathouse

Stone Coppice Andy Goldsworthy

Map of the Jupiter Artlands

By the time we got round to
The Light Pours Out Of Me
by Anya Gallaccio, I stayed
above while  the family
went in...

Going back to the car we also passed pigs (and the girls loved their spots) and sheep – it is part of a working farm after all.

Stone Coppice Andy Goldsworthy

We left in the early evening and went out the way we came in – having realized we had actually come in the exit (meeting cars which weren't expecting us!) and discussing all we had seen.

And my blog always includes some roses...

The trees are often quite spectacular.

Quarry Phyllida Barlow

Detail of The Light Pours
Out Of Me,  Anya Gallacio