Tag: life

gardening

In Gratitude…

suzielinn

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasure. ~Thornton Wilder

I have spent much of this year trying to get my proverbial ducks in a row. “I just can’t get my head in the game,” I have muttered more times that I would care to admit.

My father passed away from skin cancer in mid-March, while my husband was midway through a round of bladder cancer treatments. Our flight to Omaha was canceled, as the Midwest was forecast to receive a blizzard. And receive a blizzard they did! We ended up driving north, in to the blizzard and through the blizzard, to make it to my father’s funeral. Bladder cancer treatments and long car rides do not go together. Add in the swirling, blinding snow and fierce winds and… Well, that is one road trip we will never forget, try as we might. I do firmly blame cite that day as to why… I just can’t get my head in the game. It is November? Already? How? When did it get so late? Where are my ducks? Not in a row! Is this grief? Or just wayward ducks? But here we are. Somehow. Thanksgiving Eve.

Despite all that, I do have much to be thankful for this year. In no particular order…

This year, I am extremely thankful for my husband’s health. We found out in July that he is NED – No evidence of disease. Yes, we are currently living in this weird gray area of “not actively a cancer patient” and trying to figure out what our new normal looks like, as we float between scans and cystoscopies. Bladder cancer is one of the most recurrent of cancers, and it is a cancer that often moves about the body, but for today we are thankful. NED. We will take it. The urology oncology department at UT-Southwestern is wonderful and we are so thankful to live near such an outstanding medical facility. My husband is a hard-core cyclist and is currently 650 miles shy of hitting his goal of biking 7,500 miles this year. I am thankful for his biking, as it is good for his body and his soul. It is also a great equalizer. He has his bike. I have my garden. I don’t say anything about how much time he bikes. He doesn’t say too much about how much money I spend on the garden. It’s all equal.

I cannot count my blessings without including my most precious one, my son. He was born premature via an emergency c-section due to HELLP Syndrome. We planted a Chinkapin Oak shortly after he came home from NICU and they have grown up together. (Both shown in photograph below) In a blink of an eye, they both now tower over me. Our son received his master’s degree in May of this year and is – drumroll, please – employed in his career field! The days were long, but the years were too short… We are forever thankful for the medical care we received before, during and after his birth.

This Thanksgiving week, I am thankful for my garden, for the joy it brings to my life, for the food it provides my body, for the healing energy it gives my soul. I am thankful for the wildlife that pass our way, such as the gulf fritillary caterpillar I spied this Thanksgiving Eve day. (Photograph below)

I am thankful for the rain and the sunshine that enables the garden to grow, such as the garlic that is already several inches tall after just a week in the ground. (Photograph below) I am thankful for my own health, as my body continues to play “Whack-A-Mole” with various ailments. This year, it has been my right shoulder and bicep, surgically repaired in late August. I am extremely thankful that I have been able to resume gardening this fall. (And very, very thankful that my husband took care of my garden while I was recovering from surgery!)

…all which we behold is full of blessings… ~ William Wordsworth

Notable harvests this year include: Our first tastes of loquats! Heavenly! And persimmons! Oh My. (Loquat shown in photograph below.)

One should never count their loquats before they ripen, but my Christmas loquat is currently blooming and I am ever so hopeful that I will get a good harvest next spring. As loquats bloom during the winter months, mine resides in a large container which comes in to the garage during freezing weather.

It has been another wonderful year for hot peppers. Here it is, late November, and I still have Tabasco peppers growing and soaking up the sunshine. (Photograph below)

I added seven new raised beds, plus a poly tunnel, early in 2025. I have hopes that those will be dedicated to vegetable production, otherwise I tend to let the flowers roam a bit too freely and crowd out the veg. This year was not a good test of that strategy due to the above mentioned “Can’t get my head in the game,” coupled with being sidelined from gardening while my shoulder and bicep recovered. The poly tunnel (currently minus its poly covering) is comically overgrown at the moment! (Photograph below) But – as I promised my tomato cages, when I stacked them up prior to my surgery: Here’s to a healthy and productive 2026!

In addition to the overgrown poly tunnel, I have lost more than one pathway, overtaken now by salvia coccinia. (Photograph below) Yes, I have my work cut out for me, reigning the garden back in. But I am thankful for free spirited reseeding flowers, such as this salvia, and the whimsy they bring as they pop up here and there.

It is perhaps odd to be thankful for garden art, but that is part of what makes a garden – well – a garden. The statuary. The decorations. Those unique touches. The stories and memories behind each piece, collected over the years. This angel (shown below) came to my garden early in the year, a free piece listed on our local “buy nothing” group. Yes, the bowl and a wing is broken, but – to me – that is what makes her so charming. I should mention here that she weighs in at a hefty 200-some-odd pounds and was a beast for me to get loaded in to my truck by myself. I am (on most days) thankful for my personal trainer. Without him, I wouldn’t push myself to lift such heavy weights which directly translated to being able to load this beast of an angel.

For gratitude not merely stands alone at the head of all the virtues, but is even mother of all the rest. ~ Cicero

I am ever thankful for family and friends, food on the table and a warm place to rest my head at night. For good books and chocolate.

(The loquat photograph was taken in April of this year. The remaining photographs were taken today, November 26th, on Thanksgiving Eve day, in my southern Denton County, Texas, garden.)

gardening

Back in the saddle again…

suzielinn

The rollercoaster which is my life decided it was time to fly off a cliff. Or so it has felt like the past few months.

Last autumn, I took a hard kersplat while training for a 10k run. (Otherwise known as: I took a fall last fall. Autumn and kersplat sound much better, amiright? But I digress…) Life being what it is, it wasn’t until June that I decided to confront the nagging pain and discomfort in my right shoulder, a result of landing hard on my bent arm last autumn. And – wouldn’t you know it – I had a complete tear in the rotator cuff, as well as a torn bicep, and. Hello, Cliff. Time to take flight.

Two months ago, I had surgery to repair both tears and – if you aren’t familiar with post rotator cuff surgery – consider yourself very, very fortunate. Six weeks in the bulkiest, hottest, most uncomfortable contraption ever invented. Yes, they call it an “abductor shoulder sling.” I prefer to call it… er… I will keep this G rated. I will just say that at my six week post-op appointment, I told the orthopedic surgeon that I had a gallon of gasoline and a metal trash in my truck and I planned to burn that… er… sling… in his parking lot, if he wanted to join me for the bonfire. He advised me to throw the sling in the attic “as insurance that I will never ever need it again – Murphy’s Law – as soon as one gets rid of it, they will need it again.” So off to the attic the sling went… I am not one to tempt Fate nor Murphy.

And what does all of that have to do with gardening and being Back in the Saddle Again?

Well, my garden assistant – otherwise known as The Husband – the one who had dutifully kept my garden watered through the hottest part of a Texas summer while I was confined to the above mentioned sling – had been telling me for the past week that I had a lot of peppers that needed to be picked. Yes, yes, I knew that. But I am in what the physical therapist calls, “The Danger Zone.” I am out of the sling but not out of the woods and free to roam about quite yet. My garden strolls have been limited to just that. Strolls. On paths. No actual gardening. Ah. But Sunday, while The Husband, otherwise known as The Enforcer Of Shoulder Rehab Rules, was away running errands, I decided those peppers weren’t going to pick themselves, so off to the garden I went!

Ah! I am ridin’ the range again! Back in the saddle, I am!

It will be slow and steady for quite a while yet but I cannot even begin to tell you how glorious it felt to get some dirt under my fingernails.

And. About those peppers!

I picked a bowl.

And then needed another bowl?!

Yes. The Husband was right. (Sh… Don’t tell him I said that! Our secret, okay?)

I Had Some Peppers To Pick!

Two bowls worth of peppers! Not too shabby considering the garden had run feral for two months.

Some of the poblano peppers went straight in to supper that night as tamale stuffed peppers, which was the first time making that recipe and it will be back on the menu again soon. Some of the peppers are too wickedly hot (ie: 45 minutes after I tasted and spit out one of them, I was beginning to feel my lips again…) Those will most likely be given to a neighbor who likes him some hot peppers. Some of the peppers are destined for the dehydrator, as I purchased one last summer after I realized I can make my own chimichurri seasoning.

I am now anxious to get some winter veg planted, though I will need to clear some garden space first as the passionvine, in my absence, may have tried to outperform kudzu as fastest growing vine in the south. That task will need to wait a while, though, as the fritillary butterflies have been all aflutter the past few days. In the meantime, I will wander the garden a bit more now and dream of better gardening days ahead. And dream of once again having two strong sturdy shoulders.

Keep calm and garden on and take care of your body and each other.