Relearning lessons learned

One of the regular sand storms that blow through. I think this was Saturday and preceded the rain we got.


6/22/09 Monday
Yesterday afternoon I had one of those major slowdowns that are petite seizures. Not all slowdowns are seizures, at least I don’t think. Some are just times of confusion or reduced ability to process information (A fancy way of saying “think”) that come with stress or lots on my mind. There is always lots on my mind. Anyway, it was a bad one. You can hear it clearly in my speech and Cherie noticed a long time ago a difference in how I hold my hands when this happens, especially on my right side. It’s really strange. I can use my hand and arm just fine when I’m thinking about it but when I don’t it sort of freezes in the position I last had it until I use it again. So you will see me walking with my right arm perhaps bent up towards my chest and the hand kind of curled up. This slowdown lasted almost eight hours. That’s longer than usual. I’m grateful these don’t happen as often as they used to. In fact slowdowns at this level rarely happen anymore, maybe two or three a month now versus eight or nine a week. It came with a severe headache this time. The headaches have been happening a lot more lately, almost every day.

Regardless, or despite that, I worked hard. Moved lots of railroad ties in order to set up the herb garden. That’s something I’ve wanted to do for two years now. Actually I dug beds and planted herbs our first year but everything died. I can’t remember if I tried again last year and really don’t have time to go back in this journal to see. It’s not that important.

We bought lots of herbs at Aldredge yesterday, or Saturday, I’m not sure right now, can’t remember. So that’s spurring me to action. I’m tired of buying plants and having them die because I can’t seem to get them in the ground. Again, that’s the constant conflict between what I want to do and am able to. It’s killing me to do but damn it, I’m determined to actually accomplish something I started. I jokingly asked Mike, one of our friends at Sunday school, “Do you want to help me move railroad ties?”. I think I put him on the spot without intending to. He said “That’s something I would do when I was thirty”. We talked about how heavy they are and had a general discussion about making raised garden beds.



I also prepared this area around our Mulberry tree. It is where we plan to plant the mint we have. When we were at Aldredge we saw some mint plants and I bought one labeled “English” mint. There was spearmint also on the display but I knew we had mail ordered some so we didn’t get it. What I forgot was that the entire order of three different kinds of mint arrived dead. Totally dead. It had been on sale from Henry Fields, where we have ordered several live plants from. The reason it was on sale was it was the last they had and clearly not in good shape. They have a guarantee but when we called we learned there is no more left so the order will be sent out late fall or next year, can’t remember which. But at least I have an area prepared though the drip irrigation isn’t installed. Drip irrigation is vital for anything to survive out here.



I will fire up the tractor to move the equivalent of about thirty of forty wheelbarrow loads of dirt to where the raised herb beds will be. First I have to put in fence posts to keep the railroad ties in place when the dirt is put in. I relearned a lesson I had learned two years ago. That is you can’t cut railroad ties with a chainsaw. Well you can but it destroys the chain quickly. So I destroyed a chain yesterday. This means that I’m unable to cut railroad ties to make ends for the raised beds. I guess that for now I’ll just cut some plywood to fit. It won’t take long to rot but for now this will at least allow me to put dirt in so I can plant these herbs. Relearning lessons is unfortunately a constant thing when you can't remember what you did. Thus I make the same mistakes again.


Here's where I started replanting the two hundred plus cantaloupe and honeydew melons I killed with the bad insecticide soap.




It’s going to be a hot day. 92 degrees isn’t bad but with the rain we had the humidity will be up there so it will feel like a hundred. I hurt like hell from moving all those railroad ties but that doesn’t stop me. I’m used to it. Took a pain pill at 7:00 so can’t take another one till 11:00. The prescription says to wait six hours but I only wait four when I hurt like this. Time to get back out there so see ya later.



Here's another one of our "Archeological" digs. The ashes of my grandfather's sister were buried at the mulberry tree where I want to plant the mint. The marker weighed a ton but wasn't as heavy as the railroad ties. Underneath it was the can with her ashes and a rosary on top. We don't know what to do with them and will try to contact his family to see if they want the ashes. I know the family is in New York somewhere. Any ideas? What's right to do about stuff like this? I'm pretty clueless.