Nov 28, 2018
For about 8 weeks I was sick with bronchitis. I coughed and coughed and coughed, and had no energy or stamina. I was still working on my writing, which right now consists of book reviews churned out at a mad pace, in an effort to expand my almost non-existent writers’ network.
image:authorsguild.org
But after working each morning I dragged around, lay down between chores, and tried unsuccessfully not to whine and complain. Joe advised me that rather than say, “I just can’t manage to make dinner tonight,” I could simply say, “Will you do dinner?” And when I emerged from this truly annoying condition, I resolved to banish the word “exhausted” from my vocabulary.
image: the-lazy-trader.com
It’s been about a week since my energy returned. The first thing I wanted to do was rescue the garden. Huge amounts of spring rain followed by killing summer heat and mosquitoes had kept me away, and when finally the humidity and temperature dropped, the bronchitis hit. So everything was weedy and tangled. The wild hedge by the front walk was way over my head, and the giant bamboo was overhanging the path and slapping the roof of the pool screen.
Ever since our friend Ted gave me powerful long-handled pruning shears, I love pruning. I cut all the aspiring trees in the hedge down to chest level, and the next day cut back the bamboo. It all made a most satisfying pile by the curb, waiting to be hauled away. Alas, I can’t take a picture of it, since the yard waste truck has come and gone.
Joe’s daughter Leah was hosting her first Thanksgiving, and we were getting ready to drive to New Orleans on Tuesday when our granddaughter Amanda got sick and couldn’t go. She insisted that I should go anyway, that she’d be okay on her own. “I’m not fourteen!” she said indignantly. But I’m not leaving a 16-year-old by herself for five days, no matter how self-sufficient she thinks she is. So Joe went off and I stayed behind, both of us disappointed.
I occasionally descended into feeling sorry for myself, but I invited myself to Chris and Michelle’s for Thanksgiving dinner with a small group of good friends and Michelle’s smiling 96-year-old mother, whose failing memory has not destroyed her lively wit. The rest of the time I stayed busy with books and writing, looking into book publicists, listening to music while I crocheted hats.
image:skinnerinc.com
Thanksgiving day was chilly by Florida standards, but Black Friday was mild. After some time doing book things, I fed the birds their mealy worms, and sat in the sun cleaning up the big pots where I grow greens in the winter. The soil was still rich and black; the weeds were easy to pull. The weediest pot, filled with a gorgeous clump of wood sorrel, turned out to be the home of many large rust and black ants. Fortunately they didn’t bite. I didn’t want to kill them, and didn’t think of looking on the internet for a solution, so I put the pot in my cart and rolled it over to the woods, where I dumped it among the ferns.
image:fmcprosolutions.com
It took about an hour to weed all the pots. Now I had fifteen pots just begging for plants, so I went to Garden Gate nursery. To my surprise, there was only one other customer. To my delight, the nursery had just received new stock. They had lots of arugula, mustard, and chard, my three favorites, and teeny seedlings of a lettuce I’ve never seen before.
images: arugula, mustard johnnyseeds.com chard bonnieplants.com
I bought 25 baby plants, plus three small red geraniums covered with buds, to replace the thoroughly dead old geraniums by the front door. I couldn’t stop smiling all the way home. Let others stand in endless lines to spend way too much money for huge amounts of stuff on Black Friday. click I’m happy to spend my own Green Friday browsing alone through flowers and greens.
May 9, 2018
Last spring I decided I wanted a bird feeder in the backyard. I spent a happy hour with the knowledgeable and helpful staff of Wild Birds Unlimited, where the variety of feeders and food is almost… Unlimited.
Just as I finished my list, Joe happened to call. When he learned what it would cost, he balked, and said we should talk it over. I was quite downcast on the drive home, until I remembered that my 70th birthday was approaching in July. Joe agreed it would be a good birthday present, and told me to send him my list: auger pole, a curved double hanger, an antimicrobial tube feeder, a dinner bell, and a bag of seed. Now I had five months to look forward to feeding the birds. Anticipation of pleasure is, in itself, a very considerable pleasure.- David Hume
David Hume image:slate.com
I spent a lot of those five months in North Carolina, taking care of my sister Luli, who was dying. At the end she was in UNC hospice, a beautiful place in Pittsboro, with a bird feeder outside every guestroom. Though she was beyond comfort, the birds were a comfort to me. And when I was at home the birds and the bird feeder became an obsession.
Hospice called just before 7am on August 16. As soon as I saw the phone number I knew Luli was gone. Then came the dazed time. I weeded and pruned in the garden, sadly bedraggled after two months of spring drought and five months of neglect. I floated around in the pool, singing and crying. And I watched the birds. I sat on the deck with my binoculars, using the Cornell website for identification: tufted titmouse, cardinal, brown thrasher, Carolina wren, Carolina chickadee. 
images: titmouse wilddelight.com thrasher pinterest wren animalspot.net
I haunted the Wild Birds store, and bought meal worms, a squirrel baffle, a bird bath, and suet seed cakes. Spending was out of control, so I put myself on a weekly allowance for books, birds, clothes, plants, and all other gifts to myself. The allowance has reduced both my spending and my money-guilt, and it has expanded my bird feeding array – two poles now, two dinner bells and a tube feeder, a humming bird feeder, and a jury-rigged bird bath.
I am still trying to solve the problem of the bird bath. First I had a shallow plastic bowl resting in a ring on the pole. No birds came. A drip or spray will attract birds, but the whole array is far from running water and electricity. I found a floating plastic lily pad with a solar pump, but it quickly squirted all the water out of the bowl. I bought a deep metal dog dish, but birds don’t like deep water, so I bought rocks to put in the bottom and anchor the pump in the middle. When the sun is bright, the water shoots high, and I have to refill the bath every morning. And sometimes the pump comes loose and floats to the side, squirting all the water out in half an hour.
Cleaning the bath every week is an elaborate process. I keep it high to deter leaping cats, so I have to climb up on my kitchen stepladder to take it down. What with rocks and water, it is very heavy. The rocks go into a bucket with a dilute bleach solution, and then I rinse them over and over with the hose.
I keep coming up with new ideas. The birds have now discovered the water – maybe if I return to the simple plastic bird bath they will come even without the spray. I’m appalled by how much time I spend thinking about this.
Birds love worms. While meal worms are $12.95 for 500 at Wild Birds, you can buy 1000 for about the same price on the internet. I have a standing order for 1000 a month. I keep them in a container in the back of the refrigerator. Every morning I put a few into the dinner bells.
The worms gross out Joe and Amanda, a welcome bonus. For the worms’ weekly feeding (they get a piece of carrot and 8 hours at room temperature) Amanda insists I move them from the kitchen counter to a shelf in the atrium. I have chased her out of the kitchen with the worm-box.
Even in bulk the meal worms aren’t cheap, and the cost comes out of my allowance. I’ve just learned about earthworm farms, used to create rich compost. I’m trying to find out whether I can replace meal worms with earthworms for the bird feeders. It would be another gross project which I would enjoy discussing with Joe and Amanda.
The birds kept me company until November, when I suppose they all went to Miami and points south to escape our unusual cold.
image:123RF.com
This last strange, fierce winter not only drove away the birds, it froze almost everything to the ground. The garden beds were bleak and brown. I pruned all the deadwood, reducing the shrubs to small stumps.
I survived Thanksgiving without Luli, and Christmas without Luli. I didn’t struggle to write. I only wrote three blog posts, and never looked at my novel. I held on to the idea, like a life raft, that the first year of loss would be the hardest.
The birds returned in March, and I returned to the deck with my binoculars. I am delighted when a new type of bird visits the feeder, and am beginning to understand bird watchers in the wild, with their life lists.
I first saw doves pecking around the grass under the feeders. Then they discovered the worms in the dinner bell, hopped inside, and stayed until all they had gobbled them all up; the wrens and cardinals were out of luck.
Cardinals zip across the yard in pairs, and often the male feeds the female. They are nesting in the bamboo and in the scraggly woods. Yesterday a female fledging flew to the feeder and ate some worms, followed closely by an adult male who perched above her, watching. As they flew off an adult female joined them and the three entered the woods together.
fledgling cardinal image:terra4incognita.wordpress
Last week the first blue jay came, repeatedly. It flew in from the clump of wild growth, visited all three feeders and the birdbath, flew off to the bamboo. It returned to all the feeders and flew off to a tree across the yard. It came back once more, flew to the fence, and then went about its business.
Along with the birds, my garden has returned. The frozen bushes I had cut back began growing again. The beauty berry and princess plant covered themselves with leaves, and the lantana began to bloom. One of my favorites, whose name I have forgotten, blooms in summer with a small red flower. It stayed dead while everything else came to life, but the other day four leaves appeared at the bottom. In Luli's Garden, that I planted in September in her memory, the gingers poked out of the ground.
My writing roared back to life. In less than two months I’ve written 30 pages and plotted out many new scenes in the novel I thought I would never finish. I had to force myself to take a break from it to write this.
From this hard year of mourning I’m learning patience and faith. The birds, the flowers, the writing will come when they come. I can’t hurry them. And though a world without Luli sometimes feels unbearable, I know grief will subside in due time.
Luli's Garden
Jan 8, 2016
Our Christmas this year involved lots of drama and three of us sick, including the dog. You don’t wanna know. But Christmas Day was sweet and peaceful, just Joe, Amanda and me. Herbed mushrooms, scrambled eggs, a pecan streusel coffee cake, few presents, and an interminable game of Uno. 83 degrees and sunny in the garden. Here’s some beauty from that day.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Nov 6, 2015
Amanda came into my office this morning in a rare friendly mood and said,
“Yes! Now this place smells like old ladies.”
She was standing right by Trisket’s bed, which is under the desk, so I wondered.
“You sure it doesn’t just smell like Trisket?”
“If I leaned over and smelled her bed it probably would. But no, this is old lady smell.”
“What do old ladies smell like?”
“Cinnamon and old libraries.”
That was a relief. She might have said something about pee. I pointed out the musty books that produce the old library smell, then directed her to the dried lavender and roses hanging on the closet door.
“Take a whiff of that.”
“That’s it! That’s the old lady smell!”
“Oh I’m so glad. People always say old ladies smell like lavender”.
“You like that?”
“Yes. I love being an old lady. And I love that smell.”
“You’re weird, Grandma.”
I’ve always loved smells – sweet, floral, sour, pungent, funky. Even nasty smells intrigue me, though I draw the line at those that make me gag. About ten percent of women lose the sense of smell as they grow old – this is known as anosmia. Parosmia- when fragrant smells turn foul – is worse. I hope I never suffer either one.
My garden is full of fragrant plants – citrus, roses, anise, tea olive and many more. The most successful is my HUGE lavender bush. It keeps going through frosty winters and baking-hot summers. I’ve never understood why it’s so happy in my yard. It reminds me of rosemary, but numerous rosemary plants have shriveled in the same bed. (I decide whether plants are similar according to whether they remind me of each other. I am not a skilled horticulturalist.) This year, for the first time ever, it has produced a single little flower. It also has a resident spider.
I love this plant. I tear off branches and carry them around with me for happy smelling. I used to put sprigs in all my drawers and in the linen closet and under the bottom sheet on our bed, until Joe told me he doesn’t like the smell of lavender. So now I make big bunches of lavender to give to women in stressful situations, such as my friend April when she was pregnant and surrounded by babies. I hang bunches out on the atrium to dry, and then crumble them into ziplock bags to give away.
Every room in our house has a different smell, some pleasant, some not so. When I was little, I liked the musty smell of my grandmother’s New York apartment. I cherish the title “old.” click I’m happy that my room – my retreat and my refuge, filled with photos and paintings of women – smells like an old lady.
Paintings by Arupa Freeman click
My mother at twenty
Collage by me (images by many, including Esther Garcia Eder click)
May 7, 2015
I was itching to get working in the garden, but I had three weeks of the Gainesville respiratory crud in March and April. Still, without any help from me, everything's green, and flowers are getting started. First, the volunteers:
Wild petunias, really a lovely pale blue, pop up everywhere.
So does spiderwort, aka dayflower 
I know, it's just a weed – Spanish needle
And finally, mimosa – a skinny tree that leans from my woods into the yard every spring, with fragrant flowers that make you think peaches and oranges got cozy over the winter.
Next, the planted garden:
Drift roses – fragrant, thorny, and trouble-free (except I have to keep cutting them back)
These berries will soon be blue and sweet.
Lipstick plant and I-can't-remember-its name. I'm not even sure I like these two, but they're so happy where they are I can't bear to pull them up.
Milkweed's almost open – and I've seen 2 monarchs flying around waiting.
And here's my Simpson's Stopper, aka twinberry, blooming this year for the first time, with a licorice-vanilla scent (though the internet claims it's nutmeg-y) (And also said it will reach 20 feet – uh oh, I thought it was a shrub!)
Everything's coming up zinnias – my first time planting from seed – I've planted two kinds of zinnias, two kinds of basil, and a spring garden mix. Oh boy, can't wait! (Yes, I know I have to thin them.)
Oct 30, 2014
Lipstick plant, tibouchina, and salvia
The chrysanthemum is almost open.
The mushrooms are cool, but I wish they weren't all over the yard.
The weird phallic Victorian plant I showed you in Garden in August has detumesced, and bloomed.
Look how they've grown since August!
