One thing that I have learned very quickly about a cancer diagnosis is that it puts everything else into sharp perspective. Things that might have annoyed me a week ago are not even a blip on my radar now.
Take the daily garden tour we do in the summer. Two weeks ago, when Captain would suggest cruising down to check the progress in the garden, I might have turned up my nose and been a touch snarky. After all, how much can plants grow in 24 hours.
Now? It’s a smile and a nod of agreement, and I take his hand to stroll across the lawn in the quiet late evening sun over to the garden.
Last night our inspection revealed that our cucumber plants have teeny tiny cucumbers growing, so I’ll be making pickles in a week or two. We started harvesting cherry tomatoes over the weekend already, but the romas are starting to pop up as well. We already went through the first crop of radishes and are anxiously awaiting crop #2 to ripen enough to harvest.
We had fresh Swiss chard out of the garden for supper last night. Beats that crap in a can to heck and back.
Oddly enough, our zucchini plant withered and died. For Pete sake...who can’t grow zucchini?? It’s a mystery.
The eggplants seem to be doing well, however, and the squash plants...well, they are just taking over everything.
We also have some volunteer plants growing among the lettuce and the green peppers. It’s either squash or cucumbers, but we just aren’t quite sure yet. So that’s a little mystery that we check each night as we poke around.
When I was thinking that I would be having surgery this week and then laid up for six to eight more weeks, those garden tours took on a bit of sadness because I figured I wouldn’t be able to can a darn thing from the best looking garden we’ve ever had.
Now with a surgery date more in the late August to early September time frame, I will be able to do some canning at least...pickles, green beans, vegetable soup, and carrots. The tomatoes may or may not be ready before I have surgery. I guess Captain is going to learn how to can!!
The flower beds, too, are doing well. The mutant whiskey barrel was a different experiment this year. Usually I put plants in there, but this year I received a seed packet of “Old Fashioned” seeds from my work unit as part of National Medical Transcription Week, so I put those in there. The first bloom opened up the other day--an orange zinnia. There are more plants in there getting ready to bloom and I have no idea what they are, but they are growing like the little mutants I expected. That zinnia plant, yeah...the stem is a good 18 inches high. I don’t know if that’s normal for zinnias or not, but it looks sort of big to me.
I find that I am looking forward to those evening strolls with my husband for more than just checking the garden. It reminds me why I married him in the first place and let’s me know I am a pretty smart cookie for doing so!
Love to you all,
Mrs. Captain
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