Emerging from the pit

I'm posting from my parents home a few hours before I start my trip home. This was a difficult week - yeh, that's an understatement.

• Quick travel plans
• Putting together a memorial service and a reception
• Stress, inability to sleep
• Too hot, too cold in the hotel room
• No appetite
• Sorting through Mom's things
• Taking things to charities for donation
• Brother's birthday
• Bad summer storms
• Power outage
• Getting locked out of the house and how we resolved that (breaking a window, yay)
• Not being able to ship my stuff home
• Worry that my flight may get delayed or canceled
• Worry how the next few months will be

But...good things too. 

• Husband supporting me in amazing ways
• Pretty much all the relatives coming to the service.
• Making it through the service and my part of the service.
• Immediate family supporting each others' decisions.
• Support from my church

Yes, it could have been a lot worse. It could get a lot worse, still, but so far so good.

After cleaning out Mom's house, I have the urge to clean out my own house. All kinds of stuff is tucked away in boxes and drawers and closets, and it would be nice to be a little lighter. I don't know when I'll be ready to work on my quilting and crafting again.

Yet, the house is not done. Some of us need to come back and sort through the china cabinet, storage closets, and the attic. I don't know when I'll come back. I want to be home. 

My Mom Died Today

I found out my Mom died yesterday.

I don't know anything what to do. I live about 1000 miles away, I can't get there. No one I've talked to knows anything - exactly how she died, what she died of, what we will do, if they need me.

I feel like I should be doing something or carrying on; but I'm kind of numb right now. Writing on a blog is kinda the best I can do. I started writing yesterday and finished up early this morning.

Here's the story: and I'm sure I'll tell it a hundred times in the next few weeks. Mom had multiple health problems, and to some extent, we knew she probably didn't have a lot of time left. Personally, I thought it would be a little more drawn out with multiple trips to the hospital and lots of pain.  Mom was 72.

Last night, my brother called, alarmed and worried because he had called (or she had - I'm not sure) and she didn't sound right. She sounded upset. She only talked for a few minutes - and Mom could talk on the phone for hours, usually about nothing. He asked me to call her. I did, and she picked up the phone pretty quickly. She sounded a little off, but there were several logical reasons she could sound this way.

The next day (this morning), she fell and Dad couldn't get her up. They called EMS to help and they got her back up. She did not go to the hospital then, since the fall was minor - Dad says she slid out of a chair.

The day proceeded as normal, according to Dad. She went to take her afternoon nap, which was her habit. When Dad went to wake her up, she didn't wake up. Dad called 911, but it was really too late.

I spoke with Dad later and I guess he's hanging in there as well as possible.

I'm scared. I'm worried. I don't know what it's going to be like without having Mom to talk on the phone to. She was the central figure of our family. Now who will keep the kin?

No, actually I do know how it will be. It's going to be sad and lonely and I'm going to have a big hole in my heart for a long while.

Community Garden - Weekly Update

My plot in the Overland Park Community Garden is planted!  Now we need a little help from God, a little tending from me, and we'll have a nice harvest come August or September.

The garden didn't work out quite as I had planned. It's late in the season here for planting and it was hard to find transplants for the veggies I wanted to grow.  So, I ended up planting:

• 2 green bell peppers
• 2 jalapeno peppers
• 4 sweet banana peppers
• 4 Italian parsley
• 4 green beans (blue lake, bush variety)
• 2 rows of mustard greens
• 4 green summer squash, called Cocozelle (very similar to zucchini)

I put in seeds for the mustard greens and squash. Hopefully they will grow fast and vigorously enough to make up for the lack of starter plants.

Everything went in on June 4, yesterday.

The mustard greens were a last minute substitution for a row of green beans. I could only find 2 pots with nice looking bush bean plants and each of those pots had 2 plants in them. I separated the two plants to make a row.  The greens are from seeds given to me by a friend who is Hmong. She called them "Hmong Mustard Greens." I don't know exactly what variety they are, but I planted some last year and they were very good.

I chose a variety of peppers because I could not find many green bell peppers. It'll be fun to see if I get some banana peppers. I haven't tried them yet.

Additionally, the plot turned out to be slightly larger than 10 feet long. I could fit in six rows, altogether.

The cocozelle squash was a substitution for official zucchini, mainly because it takes only 45 days to harvest, compared to the black beauty zucchini seeds I found at 50 days (or so). Every day counts when you are starting so late!! 

(By the way, I included the links so you could see what the plants look like. I don't have any relationship with these seed/plant vendors - I neither endorse or denounce them and I do not receive any compensation for linking to them.)

Ducks

There is a pair of ducks on my front lawn. You must understand how unusual this is. There is no pond or lake anywhere near my house. Ducks are common in Kansas, but not usually in the middle of suburbia. Very strange.

I tend to attract animals. Lost dogs especially tend to find me.

When I encounter an animal outside of normal or expected context, I look up its symbolism in Native American cultures, on the web. Maybe there is a message for me in the encounter. Ducks (Mallards) represent protection, nurture, introspection. Another site says ducks represent honesty, simplicity, and resourcefulness in Celtic traditions.  I don't know what that means for me.

I told the pair they could stay and they could even nest in our yard if they want. It would be best to stay in the front yard, away from my dogs, though.

Garden Progress

This weekend I was in a picture-taking mood, so here are some photos showing the progress of my humble square foot garden.

The string marks off the square feet. This picture shows a little more than half of the garden. You can see a cucumber sprout in the foreground, then basil to the left. There's Romaine lettuce to the left of that. The next row (right to left) has a Rutgers tomato, then two little soybean sprouts (trying some dwarf soybeans for homegrown edamame). and then a square of carrots. You can plant 16 carrots in one square! The last square in that row is onion, but you can only see the tops.

The following row is a Grape tomato, green leaf lettuce (Jericho), red leaf lettuce (Red Sails), and another square of carrots. The last row is more green leaf lettuce (though you can't really see that square), unplanted, curly parsley, and arugula. I'm planning to put marigolds in the unplanted square. It's nice to have some color in the garden.

So far I've harvested 5 servings of salad greens!

Here's an "art shot" of a cucumber sprout. This was only 1 week after planting the seed in the ground. Then it got cold, and everything kinda stopped.

And here is a closeup of my first few pea pods. I am hoping to harvest a few and eat them before we go away next week. I planted these babies back in March and it took til about 7 days ago to see any flowers. When we get back from vacation, I hope we will have lots of sweet peas to enjoy. 

It takes practice and trial and error to be a good vegetable gardener. I don't know much, but I keep trying things and seeing what works and what doesn't. I think the best decision I made was last year when I decided to dig out all the soil and replace it with the custom mix described in Mel Bartholomew's book Square Foot Gardening. Plants do better in a light friable soil mix. It drains better, and its so much easier to work with.  

Plot Plan

Here's the plan for my community garden plot.

It's 4'x10' and the lines indicate 1 foot or 2 foot intervals.

The garden was approved by the city council on Tuesday this week. The garden manager sent me a soil analysis with recommendations for fertilization - that was awfully nice! I am still planning to work the soil to break it up a bit and work in some organic material to make it more friable. Plants like soil that is easier to push their roots down into.

Small, I know. As Mother Theresa said, "We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love."

Community Garden

Pea Sprout

In my humble blog, I will post a plug for a new community garden.  It may not make any difference, but then again, it might.

Overland Park, KS, where I live, is getting a community garden. For such a progressive community, it is surprising that there isn't one already. However we are a wealthy city, and we tend to think that everyone has a yard and can plant anything they want in their own little slice of heaven. Those that don't have a yard probably don't want to plant a garden - they can just go to our Farmer's Market to buy locally grown produce.

That's a rather shortsighted view, don't you think?

• You mean not everyone's yard is suited to vegetable gardening? 
• You mean some people don't have a yard?
• You mean people in retirement communities or those without enough money to buy a house with a yard all don't want to garden?
• You mean we don't have poverty here? We don't have people who could improve their food security by growing their own?

One of my friends has been working on this project for at least three years. The city council meeting which will approve it will be in about 1 week. They better approve it....

I have rented a space. As my readers (or, should I say, "reader," heh heh) know, I have my own Square Foot Garden in the backyard for my personal use. 

I am renting the community garden plot entirely for charity - my 4'x10' plot will be a project to grow fresh produce for donation. Our local community food bank, Harvesters, participates in the national movement called Plant a Row for the Hungry, and it accepts home grown produce. I am hoping to involve similarly-interested people from my church, but if no one signs up, I'll do it anyway.

I'm not sure what I will grow yet. Harvesters has a web page with suggestions. Because of the timeline of approval and access, it will be a short growing season, so I'm thinking quick growers:

• Green beans
• Peppers
• Zucchini
• Herbs - basil, parsley

The other reason I want to rent a plot is to help the garden succeed. In these initial years, it is important to demonstrate community interest and garden success.

So, here's my shout out to the Overland Park Community Garden. May it become a cornerstone of the community.