Update. . .

I have been waiting until I had something to say, but since December and the last blog post, evidently nothing in my world has wanted to become story.  That hasn’t changed, really,  I am just getting a little worn out by the drought, by the lack of communication, the lack of digging down deep for the right word.  So this might be a little choppy as I wiggle down into a groove. I think the camera is down there somewhere, so stay tuned for visual aids. . .

And it isn’t really true that nothing has happened.  The rose-breasted grosbeaks flew through last week, the Paris Fashion Week of birds;  their black and white bodies splashed with a chest blaze of deepest pink.  How is that possible?  True to their couture nature, there are only a few, and they stay only briefly, on their way to more elegant climates.

There were three baby bunnies born under the back deck, and somehow, so far, the hawks have been distracted with other dinners.  Periodically, at dusk or in the early early morning, we will see gradually bigger rabbits under the bird feeders.

A couple of weeks ago, the goldfinches came through in a rush, emptying thistle feeders in a single day, here long enough to change from winter dull to startling yellow.  All three bluebird houses, right now, have parents slithering through the hole to feed little grey furballs of birds-to-be.  And just for our amusement, there is a house sparrow nest in the mouth of a giant metal chicken on the front porch.  

The old-fashioned irises have come and gone, the lavender ones under the maple and the cream and taupe ones in the big garden that break your heart with their scent of a grandmother’s perfume.  The winter kale is reaching to the skies with thick stalks and sweet yellow flowers.  I’m letting that garden go for awhile just for the bees.  The spring kale in the two cold frames is starting to realize the weather is too warm for its liking and I’ll need to finish harvesting in the next few days.  We ended up with continuous kale both because we like it and because I don’t do the kind of meticulous planning that a real farmer would.

I’m always kind of surprised by the garden.  It is always doing something unexpected and it doesn’t wait for me.  It doesn’t wait for me to realize it is time to plant this or harvest that.  It just goes on, independently, growing the seeds that happen to show up, without prejudice.

I could learn from that.  Whatever comes through, in its time, is fine.

I haven’t been so accommodating.  I didn’t want to go to Tennessee when my mother ended up in the hospital recently. I say “ended up” because it still isn’t exactly clear whether she engineered the little sidetrip away from her assisted living home, against which she seems to be constantly rebelling.  She just  turned ninety, and to celebrate the occasion she has started to use the “N” word, and had to be forcibly wheeled out of the dining room because she started yelling. The director pushed Mom in her wheelchair back to her apartment and got her into her recliner.  She had to leave for a moment and when she returned, Mom was sitting in the floor, claiming she had fallen, sitting in a position curiously like someone would be who had scooted herself into the floor.

Mom ended up in the hospital this last time because when her afternoon caregiver arrived on this particular day, Mom was breathing heavily and the caregiver couldn’t get her attention.  They both went to the emergency room, but the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong, but at ninety, they admit you anyway.  She was there for a week, with all manner of tests, meals brought to her in bed, a bevy of nurses commenting on her sweet smile.

When my sister Laura and I got there the morning after admission she told us she had gin in her hospital water carafe and that she had been on a ride in a casket.  I don’t know where the gin came from for as far as I know, since my Dad died, my mother has a decided preference for Kendall Jackson Chardonnay.  It was Kendall Jackson they took away from her about a month after she got to assisted living.  Evidently she was coming back from breakfast and drinking and dialing, going through her address book, calling people to come get her.

That may have been when her minister decided to stop coming to see her.  We’re not sure.  All we know is that it is now the assistant minister’s job and her visits seem to have slacked off as well. Anyway, at the close of last week’s Hospital Spa Vacation, the doctor said Mom had the beginnings of both congestive heart failure and “mild dementia.”

“Ha!” said the director of the assisted living place.  “Ha!” said their director of nursing.  “She knows exactly what she is doing.”  I guess the story of the casket ride convinced the doctor, and it couldn’t have helped that Mom’s hearing aids went completely dead, even with new batteries, so all the information she had to comment upon started out in her own head. True for me too sometimes.

So we are all along for the ride it seems.  Us, Mom, the kale, the new birds and bunnies.

It really has been a glorious Spring.  And now that I’ve broken the ice, maybe I can tell you about it more often.