Nurturing nature

On our new chat board, I post a new Scripture every day. So far, it's been edifying for me. Today's verse was:

The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Isaiah 58:11 NIV

These words popped into my mind as I looked at my kitchen windowsill. Some time ago, I had taken a used egg carton and also a dishlike thing that some cookies came in, filled them with potting soil and pressed a single nasturtium seed, collected from my flowers last Fall, into the mix. I've been watering them every day for two weeks.

A few days ago, I dug one out with my finger and it looked hard, impenetrable, unlikely to sprout. I was about to toss them all out onto the bank behind the house, 'til three days ago, when I noticed the pale-yellow neck of a sprout bending up through the soil.

In only three days, that little tyke is about three inches tall. And another brother or sister is standing tall in the egg cup alongside it and I can see identical bent stalks pushing up the dark potting soil in all of the remaining cups.

And tonight the thought came to my mind that it was important to me to remember to keep them watered, not too much, not too little. I don't want to look at them and see leaves turning yellow. I don't want to transplant them out into the oak planter barrels too soon, exposing them to hot sun or cold nights prematurely. They are so fragile and will take nurturing and nourishing in order to bring them to the point of being strong, blossom-producing plants.

How alike this must be to the way our Lord feels about us. Like a well-watered garden, he will help us survive the sun-scorched earth.

Happy Anniversary

Four years ago today, I broke my neck.

I never would have believed that I'd still be having such problems.
I remember the neurosurgeon (who handled my care but did not operate) leaning over my hospital bed and saying, "You'll go through a rough time of recovery, but you'll be fine."

I'm at a loss of what else to say.

Four years ago. It was Good Friday.

No bending/stooping/kneeling, okay?

I have to get after myself and no more of the above activities, at least for a few months!
I am such a mess right now. I wake up in horrid pain every night from the waist down, including calf spasms in both legs, burning hips and lower back, very painful feet.

This was all caused by me abandoning my reacher-grabber tool and leaning over carefully to pick up things from the floor, thinking it was good for me...and also from a small project I did last week, where I had to kneel on the floor about five times for about 2 minutes each. No can do!

I'm on the ol' pain meds and making lists of low-impact things I can do. I've decided I want a small, portable sewing machine for Mother's Day. I saw one advertised in a Kmart flyer for $29 last week on sale. I think I could also make another whirly gig.

I'm hanging in there, but moving slow and not taking any inspirational walks, either. Trying
to get these legs less spastic. I go to see Dr. B in NY on May 2, got word yesterday that work comp authorized the trip for a follow up appointment. I have a huge list of questions, I'm sure he'll LOVE that, ha!

Message/chat board for Jefferson Fracture folks

Also for those of you with skull base fractures including atlanto-occipital dislocation!
As far as I know, there is no other place for you to chat that is exactly for these
trauma-related conditions. It's brand new, so come and post and let's learn about
each other. It's a lonely world out there? Don't go through it alone like I did!

http://www.runboard.com/bhealingfriends.f13

See you there...

Reading the Forest

Today was one of those days when I felt very weak, very pained. I know it's because I did too much a couple of days ago, and when I do that, it takes a day or two for it to demand payback. My mind would have liked to have done a few things around the house, but I knew my body wouldn't stand for it.

However, my little dog Quincy has been so patient and it has been maybe a week since I've taken him across the road for a walk. I could have stayed home in bed and read my book, but I decided to read the forest instead.

As we first crossed the road (Quincy is learning to sit at my heels beside the road while I wait and check the traffic before we cross), we headed down an old woods road, the neighbor's dog barked and a wild turkey hidden in the trees gobbled. We continued down the road, me whistling several times, notes that go from high to low, something I learned about 30 years ago which will cause a turkey, wild or otherwise, to gobble a reply.

I got to hear about 8 return calls and each one brought a smile to my face. We continued on a bit, me with my ever-present walking stick, an old piece of bamboo.

As I've written before, I have to walk very slowly and stop a lot but eventually, we made it into the stand of oaks and Ponderosa. I glimpsed something off to my right, and saw that four lovely deer stood about 80 ft. away. Quincy was great: he didn't bark or try to chase the deer, he just looked at them and stood very still. This looks like the same four that hang out in our back yard, one is a full-grown female and the other three are youngsters, one much smaller than the rest.

Eventually, they tired of me and took off at a slow trot.

And I continued on in the opposite direction, toward the creek which I could now hear as it gurgled over little water falls.
I spent a lot of time standing still, resting, looking up the hill on the other side of the creek (perhaps for that mountain lion we saw last week?) and out into the hayfield and just praising God for this incredible place so close to home.

I ambled upstream and noticed several willow branches along the trail that had been recently rubbed, the bark gone in spots revealing reddish patches of under-skin wood. Bucks have been rubbing the itchy velvet from their antlers here.

I broke a few face-high twigs away from the trail, figuring I might be helping the deer who trod here, as well. Up the creek a bit, I found a large Ponderosa pine toppled neatly across the stream. With few branches, it made the perfect bridge for someone or something other than shaky me.

It didn't take much for me to realise this was the perfect resting spot and thus I sat and enjoyed the water below me, looking for tracks (all deer) as evidence of what was crossing and drinking here. Quincy bravely crossed over on the log and scouted out the other side. He is now trained to come back quickly when I say "Hey!" so I yelped him back and he figured out how to get back over. Quite the smart, one-time city dog.

Beside me were the roots of the toppled tree and I noticed deep holes down in and around those roots, so I explored them with the end of my bamboo walking stick, wondering what I'd do if some animal leaped out of there into my lap. Nothing happened, and soon, I knew I needed to tackle the hill climb toward home.

Inching up the obscure deer trail, stepping over the barbed wire fence which had been collapsed by another fallen tree, watching always up ahead for Quincy and keeping him within hearing distance, I made my way up to my next resting point, a boulder next to the trail, situated under the turkey roost tree. I know it's a roost because of the droppings on the pine needles at the base of the tree. I always wait 'til the trail has led me above the tree a bit and then look back and up into the branches to scan for turkeys. I do this because I cannot look straight up into a tree anymore. I haven't seen any birds up there, though, and I know that's because they roost at night.

A crow winged silently overhead while I, in intense pain and weakness, trudged in little steps up and up. Not really steep, but any incline is steep to whatever is wrong with my legs. As we approached the side of the road again, I asked Quincy to sit at my feet. He didn't understand, so I pressed his backside a bit, he sat and waited while I, the wise human, checked again for traffic.

When I hear no cars or pickups approaching, I always tell him, "Okay, go home!" and he races across the road and through our front gate and up the hill to our house, stopping in his kennel to lap from his water dish. I give him the remainder of the granola bar, pieces of which are the omnipresent training-treats for our walks.

I stop by the shop to say hi to my husband and he lets me know he was a bit worried when I'd been gone longer than usual. This is surely because of the cougar sighting. I told him that I'd had to stop and rest a lot. But it pleases me he's watching out for me.

Down by the riverside

Here's a photo taken about a month ago of me and little Quincy, on the banks of the Columbia River.

The creak of rocking chairs

What a lovely day today. Sunny and starting to warm up. Outside, there are many little bulbs which are beginning to bloom, many I do not know the name of. Daffodils (jonquils) and grape hyacinths, snowdrops and little tiny yellow crocuses. Spring is indeed here.

I sat outside, in the back, and visited with my Mom on the cell phone, my chair pointed north to where I could keep my eyes on the snow-clad mountains. These are not the high, high mountains around here, they are smaller ones, covered to the top, with pine and fir. I love living where I can watch them.

When we told our neighbor about the mountain lion we saw the other day, he said that a couple of weeks ago, he was standing on his front porch looking across the road (where I walk) and saw something brown streak through the trees. He said it was not a deer, as it was not bounding. It ran fast and low to the ground.

Today, I thought of the creaking of rocking chairs. When I sit in an old chair and hear that sound, it takes me back to when I was a child, living alone with my dad. Almost every weekend, Dad would drive us to see the "old folks," which meant Aunt Hazel and Uncle Amos, or Grampa, or Aunt Bea and Uncle Harold.

They'd sit in the living room at Aunt Hazel's and I can see it yet. Uncle Amos is lounging on what we'd call today a "daybed," but it was simply a broken-down twin bed in the living room for the dogs to lie on. The hounds would be there, too, stretched out and oblivious to the old folk's neighborly chats.

Aunt Hazel is sitting in one rocker by the picture window and Dad occupies another rocker facing her, also near the window. As they talk, there are also long pauses of silence. No TV or radio in the background, no playing children babbling away. And no need to feel awkward in those quiet pauses. Just rocking, rocking, creaking, creaking. Behind Dad is an old, out-of-tune, upright piano and on top of that is a mantle clock, its ticking punctuates the creaking.

Dad's name was Larry and thus he was known to everyone. But Aunt Hazel would call him Lawrence, with a strong emphasis on the LAW....LAW-rence.....

I might be playing with toys that Aunt Hazel had in boxes and baskets in the corner, next to an old decorative Christmas fireplace...nothing fancy here, these were very poor folks. The fireplace was for kids and was made of corrugated cardboard. And it stayed up in that corner of the living room all year long.

In the winter, and if my older sister and brother were with me, we might go sliding on the hill across the road. Sometimes we slid down on an old car hood which was always thrilling and dangerous.

In the summer, I couldn't wait to get to Aunt Hazel's, when, as soon as we arrived, I'd run out to the decrepit barn in the back. The delapidated barn was filled with old harness hanging from pegs, old buggies down the center aisle, musty hay and straw in long-unused stalls. Someone boarded her horse in that barn, and horse-crazy kid that I was, I'd hang out with the fat mare and dream about riding her (but I never did). I'd also play around in the loft of the barn and search for the barn kittens. Trying to catch them, I'd always get bitten and scratched by the wild furballs.

Even a horselover can get tired of mooning over a horse she doesn't own and can't ride, so eventually, I'd tire of the barn and then, there wasn't a whole lot to do. So I'd end up behind my Dad's rocker and when his chair would rock back close to me, I'd whisper in his ear, "When are we going home?"

He'd ignore me, or say, "Soon." But it was never soon enough once boredom had set in. I had no interest in whatever they were talking about.

My great-grandmother, Grammie, used to live there. She had diabetes very badly and I can remember her legs up on a footstool and her toenails were very black. Eventually, she was placed into a nursing home because the doctors kept cutting off her legs until she only had a torso. On the day she died, my Dad took me with him to the nursing home and while he sat and watched at her bedside (my Dad loved and honored his grandmother very much), I ran and jumped and played on the rocks in the fields out back, not realizing the morbidity of the day.

My grampa also used to live there, not in the house, but in a little "camp" across the road. Grampa was dirt poor. His camp was so small, it had room for just an ancient, iron, double bed and a wood cookstove and a table to sit at. The sheets were so dirty, I wondered if anyone ever washed them for him. Grampa smoked a pipe and I can still smell that wonderful odor in his camp, and hear the ticking of the clock. Always, the ticking of the clock.

One day, Grampa went out and chopped a lot of firewood, and had a cerebral hemmorage. They took him to the hospital and Dad went to there to be with his father. I was about ten years old and stayed home. Looking for something to do, and very upset about what was happening with my dear Grampa, I took to sliding on my sled from off the snowbanks into the road. One time, I almost was run over by a car for I wasn't paying attention, I was crying over Grampa.

Grampa was something special. He trained horses and he never had any money. He didn't ride horses, he trained them for pulling wagons and sleds. He was very good at it. He had a great sense of humor, too and loved to play tricks on me. How I loved that old guy! When he came to our house for dinner, my sister and I would sit up straight and keep our hands folded in front of us, on the table, until it was time to eat. That was considered good Yankee manners.

Did you ever hear the phrase: "Go to bed when it's dark under the table?" That was how I was raised, as a small child, being told to go to bed when it was dark under the table. In the winter, this was very early!

We were pretty poor growing up, too, and had an outhouse way out back. I was afraid of the dark at that time and hated going out there to do nature's calling. I don't remember that we kept any pots in the house, either, so you either went way out there or you didn't go. When I was about 12, my Dad added a real bathroom onto the little house, and I nailed the seat shut on the outhouse and made it a clubhouse for me and the kids up the road, for our "Horse Club."

How thankful am I to have the sort of childhood I had. Oh, there were some sad moments, like when my folks broke up and divorced and I had to split each holiday in half, spending the mornings of Christmas with my Dad, then feeling guilty about leaving him alone as I went to my Mom's for the rest of the day. But, by and large, I had mostly happy times and good memories and found strong principles instilled in me to this day. I grew up cherishing the old ways and country life.

And that's just fine by me!