Tag: love

gardening

Why art thou dreaming!

suzielinn

“Heart of mine, why art thou dreaming!
Dreaming through the weary day,
While life’s precious hours are wasting,
Fast, and unimproved, away?” ~ Mary Ann H. Dodd

Life is filled with precious hours, slowly ticking time off, yet how often we spend them dreaming away the time. Next year, I will conquer this thing. Next month, I hope to do that thing. Next week? Tomorrow? Tomorrow! There are always dreams. There is always time. Until there isn’t.

Cancer is a beast. A beast that has touched my life again and again. My uncle. My aunt. My father. Neighbors and friends. My husband’s aunt. My husband.

One evening in May, 2023, my husband went out for his typical post-work bike ride. The following morning, he urinated straight blood. Was it a one-off experience, brought on by strenuous biking, or something more sinister? Thankfully, alarmed, he called his family doctor before even exiting the bathroom. Thankfully, he kept that doctor appointment scheduled for just a few days later, even though there was no more visible blood in his urine. An in-office urine collection was filled with microscopic amounts of blood. Thankfully, the doctor, suspecting a kidney stone, sent him right away for a CT scan of his abdomen. Thankfully, everything moved so fast – a month from the first symptom to the first surgery. Alas. The beast, cancer, had touched our lives once again. This time, up close and personal. Bladder cancer. The same cancer my father had been diagnosed with just a few years earlier. My father – a male, a life-long smoker and fire fighter – was in three high risk categories for bladder cancer. My husband? His only risk factor was being male. Yet here it was. That beast.

The first year after diagnosis is always a blur, or so we have been told. Surgeries. Treatment plans. Endless doctor appointments. “This is so surreal,” I must have uttered a dozen times a day, trying to make it make sense. He is always the healthy one, I would tell everyone. Never sick. Never a broken bone. Never a surgery or hospital stay. How do you answer that common greeting, “How are you doing?” How is he doing? How am I doing? How are we doing? To quote The Beatles, “I get by with a little help from my friends.”

Year One rolls in to Year Two and the numbness starts to wear off. No more surgeries. Just treatments, biopsies, scans and more doctor appointments. Year Two, my father died of cancer, though not of his original bladder cancer. Merkel cell carcinoma. Another beast had entered our lives. We are now in Year Three of my husband’s battle with this beast. Bladder cancer is highly recurrent. A lifetime of scans and monitoring. In the words of his urology oncologist: As long as you are biking and fighting, we are monitoring and treating. We get by with a little help from our friends. My husband’s biking community has been outstanding. Their love and support, we feel it. It warms our hearts in ways we could never fully convey.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do 
with your one wild and precious life?” ~ Mary Oliver

Last year, my husband set a biking goal for 2026: To compete in the 24 Hours In The Canyon biking event at Palo Duro Canyon State Park. This year, the 20th anniversary, the event was held over the last weekend of May – from noon on Saturday to noon on Sunday. The ride supports The Cancer Survivorship Center, which serves adult cancer patients in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandle and let me tell you – It was an emotional weekend! Nearly 50 of the riders, my husband included, are cancer warriors. To see and talk with others that have been touched by the beast named Cancer, to see the community of road and mountain bikers come together to support one another while also supporting a wonderful cancer support organization, to know that so many people changed their dreams into plans to put in the training and dedication it takes to ride for 24 hours, to know that so many gave of their time and energy and volunteered to support this event… We all get by with a little help from our friends.

Now I know this is primarily a gardening blog and this begs the question: Does this have anything to do with gardening? Yes, though perhaps indirectly. You see, my husband has been so blessed to be part of a local biking community, and I have been blessed to belong to a wonderful gardening community.

In an article from 2023, Amy Doneen wrote, “A sense of belonging in a group can significantly impact a person’s mental health, reducing anxiety, stress and loneliness. Humans have traditionally lived communally, looking out for one another, supporting one another and sharing in the joys and challenges of life. It is a beautiful fact that our lives are more fruitful and rewarding when we share them with others.” This past weekend, at Palo Duro Canyon State Park, we felt that sense of belonging, sharing in the joys and the challenges of life. My husband biked 194 miles over 24 hours, in challenging conditions, to come in first place for his age bracket. His trophy sums it up: “Cancer doesn’t sleep, why should we?”

Cancer is now our ever present. That uninvited guest that showed up at suppertime and stayed the night and the next day and the next week. Life’s precious hours are wasting away. It is up to each of us to make the best of our time here on earth. What will we do with our one precious and wild life?

“The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world…. It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit of one’s toil. To dig in the mellow soil… is a great thing. One gets strength out of the ground…. There is life in the ground; it goes into the seeds; and it also, when it is stirred up, goes into the man who stirs it. The hot sun on his back as he bends to shovel and hoe, or contemplatively rakes the warm and fragrant loam, is better than much medicine.” ~ Charles Dudley Warner

My husband bikes and I garden. He flies down the road on two thin bicycle tires while I stay grounded at home, tending my garden. I loved spending the weekend at Palo Duro Canyon, camping under the full moon, waking to the birds singing. I loved seeing where my husband’s training, planning and hard work took him. I also loved returning home, rushing out to my garden and harvesting what grew in the few days we were away. I loved making supper tonight with the fruits of my toil – zucchini, peppers, onions, garlic and green beans – knowing that fresh organic homegrown produce nourishes our body and soul. May we all be blessed with a passion that enables us to turn our dreams into plans, that gives us a sense of purpose in life, that leads us to our tribe, our community.

Keep calm and garden on. Sow some seeds of kindness today.

Photographs taken June 1st, 2026. I live and garden in zone 8b, southern Denton County, Texas.

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.)