I received a lovely card today from my friend Terri. It was a get well kind of card, one emphasizing my need to be patient. She reminded me how far I have come on this journey of heeling- that my progress seemed slow only to me! I needed that. You see, I am a doer, not a wait-around person. I still have a few limitations stemming from the stroke, but I keep plugging along. I'm up all day, doing projects and completing chores. At times I feel a little clumsy with my coordination, but I usually manage. I can actually handle a rake in the garden now! I even dug a little. You see, we are totally remodeling our vegetable garden.
Our land is on a hill side, which means that the vegetable beds are tiered. Unfortunately, the pathways are not level and I find it (and always did) difficult to work with my feet on an angle. First of all the garden was way too large. We have so much food, we have had trouble giving it away. The freezers are full. So why work so hard to throw the vegetables in the compost heaps? So we are down sizing the garden from 1/2 acre to 1/4 acre. For most people, that is still too big. Not for me. I love to dig in the dirt, weed, plant etc.
So earlier this year, we started to move the fence in. I decided I wanted the whole garden surrounded by railroad ties, 6x6. This is sure to keep the grass on the lawn side! This meant leveling some of the ground and moving the deer fence. This took Peter and Darren a good three months. We do everything by hand over here! Then we had to line the perimeter with concrete blocks to slow down the leaching of the pressure treated lumber into the garden. Well the blocks are 15 inches so this meant digging down a bit. Thank goodness we have a lot of property full of uneven surfaces to level because there is nothing like getting rid of hundreds of wheel barrows of dirt. As of today, I am happy to report that 1/2 is completed and that it is being paralleled by boards to created my herb bed. Now I have the pleasure of renewing the dirt and transplanting my herbs. At the speed I work, it may take a while. This is the perfect time of the year to undertake such a project.
Once the perimeter beds are completed, Peter and Darren have the task of rebuilding the center beds. All of the beds will be nearly level, or at least perfect terraces- as will all of the isles. The beds are all raised,of course. I would have liked them even higher as my back talks to me after several hours of bending down; but when I priced decent lumber, we had to scale down the height.
As soon as I figure out how to publish pictures on this blog, I will show you the progress.
What else is new? Well, I can run now, so quickstep is in the near future! The problem is that the loopiness in my head remains. No one seems to know what to make of it. I tried abandoning the blood pressure medication. It was clearing up but the blood pressure was inching up. We tried Neurontin to quiet down all of the excess energy in the brain and I have another bad reaction. Too bad, as it was starting to attenuate the nerve pain on my right side. At times, my brain senses it to be so tight that I feel something will snap! It is truly in my head. It is a phantom pain. All I can do is distract myself and I can manage OK. For some reason, I can sleep, yet while watching TV at night, my right leg wants to jump out! Go figure how crazy this all is. None of my neurologists can explain this. So when it gets unbearable, I get up and walk fast. You should see how fast I can go now. Tonight I actually felt good running. Who knows what awaits me- a marathon?
No comments:
Post a Comment