What is going on . . . ?

Three weeks ago, I fell down and broke my leg.

I had had Ewan McGregor at the vets that day - he had gone for an explosive run the night before after a rabbit and came back totally lame in one of his back legs.  Struggled back up the back stairs and promptly flopped down on the back verandah.  Which is so not like him.

So off I went to the vets the next morning, 'has he had anything to eat this morning?', 'we'll need to do an x-ray to see what's going on, leave him with us, we'll ring you when we have some answers'.  Ring, ring - 'hello, I'm sorry to tell you that Ewan McGregor has ruptured his cruciate ligament and needs surgery to fix it - fortunately, we've got space in the operating schedule for Friday so in the meantime, come and pick him up but keep him as quiet as possible till then' . . . 'Here he is, he's still a bit sleepy from the sedation we had to give him to take the x-rays, just watch that he doesn't go running and do himself an injury, that will be $700 for today, thank you, please have him here by 8.30am on Friday, oh I should let you know that the operation will cost $1100 minimum, okay bye bye, see you on Friday!'

So I took our Ewan McGregor home and he was kind of quiet until I took the dogs out for their dinner at about 8.15pm.  Having finished his food quickly (he hadn't eaten all day), Ewan McGregor then shot off down the stairs, across the lawn and round the end of the hedge he disappeared.  I cursed his naughtiness and followed him, with my torch, exquisitely attired in my pyjamas, dressing gown and daggy old slippers which had been the subject of recent conversations re their worn-outness and lack of tread on the bottom.  I had slipped in them before, at least twice.

So I proceeded with great caution, shining my torch down the hill to see where my crazy dog had gone.  Over by the side fence I couldn't see him anywhere.  I walked diagonally towards the first of the casuarina trees, past which the land flattens out and I knew I would be safer standing there.  Just one more step close to the tree and I will be on safe ground.  Stepped with my right foot which when it made contact with the ground just continued in a forward motion and I was falling.  Backwards, with my left foot remaining where it had been.  And so I fell, with my right leg out in front of me, onto my back but also onto my left leg, bent at the knee, with my left foot in a contorted sort of position, half pointing out to the side but with my toes pointed up towards my head.  And I heard the snap.  A muffled kind of snap.

Burning pain in my left ankle.  My immediate thought was 'how am I ever going to stand up?'  I was out of earshot of the house, Mike was home with the television at his usual volume.  Just stand up . . . no, that hurts too much . . . what am I going to do! . . . okay, roll over onto your hands and knees and try to get up that way . . . oh no, that hurts, what have I done to myself (insert small episode of sobbing here) . . . okay, crawl back up the hill till you're close enough for Mike to hear you.  I even gathered up all my belongings!!  Made sure I had the torch AND the rotten slippers.  Crawled till I was near the mulberry tree at which point, ignoring the pain, I got to my feet, staggered to the edge of the paving and proceeded to use the torch to morse code my distress through the windows of the family room in the hope of attracting Mike's attention.  Which I did, fortunately, quite quickly and he came outside.  I said 'I've REALLY hurt myself!!!'  But I still had the 10 steps up onto the verandah to contend with and I'm not going to describe how much that hurt.  Got inside, got the peas out of the freezer, already swelling,  paining, sobbing, okay off to Accident and Emergency (IN MY PYJAMAS!), sorry, the radiology folks have gone home to bed, here's some strong pain killers, if I poke here, does it hurt?  Okay, could be ligament damage, we'll put a bandage on it for you and you'll have to come back in the morning at 8.30am for an x-ray.  Here's some more strong pain killers, and some more to take home.

I kind of slept, but every time I moved . . . ouch!

As soon as the first x-ray was done, the radiologist lady said 'Fracture!'

I had a temporary plaster put on while they decided whether it needed a pin put in, I was admitted to hospital, the orthopaedic surgeon decided not to pin, the following day the backslab plaster was replaced with a right orange fibreglass cast and after another x-ray to check the position of the bone, off I went home on my new crutches.

Boy, it was sore!  And bruised - it still is.

Two days later, it was Ewan McGregor's day - off he went in the morning with Mike, the vet rang early afternoon to say every thing had gone well, and the procedure from here on was that he was to be kept crated for as long as possible, and only taken out, on a leash, for toilet stops.  I could have gone and bought a crate, but on the crutches, my chances of taking him down 10 stairs to go to the toilet were nil.  And so he stayed at the vets.  And almost three weeks later, he is still at the vets.  They ring me every few days and tell me how he's going, that he's pretty well taken over the place, that his injury is healing nicely.  I miss him and so does Merlin.  He'll come home when it's okay for him to be off the leash and able to get up and down the stairs by himself - who knows how long it will take.  In the meantime, the $1100 is growing by the day.

My leg has improved greatly, once the soreness went away I found it so much easier to get around.  It still hurts a bit if I put too much weight on it.  The greatest frustration is not being able to get the cast wet, so showers are an absolute nightmare for someone who loves to run a big, deep bath and lie there with a book and a glass of wine!

I have missed my mum these last few weeks, if only to hear her say 'well, what did you go and do a silly thing like that for!'

Amazing . . .

I have made it to Grandmotherhood!!!

My dear son and daughter in law, after a very long and tortuous day of labour, welcomed into their lives the gift of a son.  He was born by forceps delivery, just before a caesarian was ordered, at 8 o'clock last night, weighing 7 lb 12 ozs.  Just a lovely size.

This is this morning's photograph.  Look at that blissful innocence.  Look at that nasty forceps mark.  My first thought was that he looks so much like his mummy, but then I found this very first photo of my son and I think there is definitely a good resemblance there.

I couldn't believe how much the years in a frame had faded this photo.  You can clearly see the circle that has been exposed.  I finished knitting that little blue cardigan while in hospital after his birth and he wore it home.  I still have it.

It was such a long day yesterday, waiting for the phone to ring with the good news.  I wasn't relaxed for a single moment and I got to thinking that that must have been how it was for my mother.  When I was in the labour ward all those years ago, was my mum at home, all on edge, nervous with anticipation and worry at the same time?  One thing I do know is that at the time, I was totally oblivious of it and probably would have been cross with her if she'd told me.  After yesterday, I understand so much better.  How I wish she was here to see meet her new great-grandson.  And how my dad would have loved him, his grandkids were so special to my dad, so sad that he never got to meet any great-grandkids.

And because I never believe in doing things poorly or by half measure, I have got myself the worst possible dose of flu.  I spent last weekend (a gloomy, rainy holiday weekend!) in bed and by Tuesday was taking 2 different antibiotics and I'm still coughing and coughing.  I've got so much congestion that my breath bubbles in my chest.

So consequently, I am most saddened to say that I don't expect to be able to squeeze and smooch this precious new person for some time yet.  Everyone else is telling me when they are going for a visit and I can't go.  Why me?

Life lately . . . .

has had its ups and downs . . . .

Have I told you that I'm about to become a grandmother for the first time?  My son and his wife expect the birth of their first child within the next week or two.  It's almost surreal - this waiting for a blessed event that once again changes everything.  It seems no time since my son was, himself, a wee one.  Now he's about to become a dad.  And his wife becomes a mum.  And we older ones, the generation before, who up until the moment of this new life are the mums, are no longer the mums.  We become the grandmothers.

The pregnancy has not been without its troubles.  Morning sickness was more like all day sickness.  Major renovations were being carried out on their house and once the pregnancy was confirmed, became even more urgent.  My son's job become somewhat redundant at Christmas and just at a time when income became very important, there was none.  There was a lot of stress.

But the house is mostly sorted, a new job has been found, baby showers have been celebrated and now we wait for the happy event.  I have been knitting (chuckle, as my knitting skills are somewhat suspect), thank goodness for Ravelry - it has taken over from eBay as my most favourite bookmark.

In March I began making a quilt for my sister in law who was turning 50 in April (snort, did I think that was plenty of time to get it done?) and whilst I was in the process of piecing it, discovered to my dismay that my niece had just turned 30 (not 29 as I thought) and as I had made up some crazy plan that a zero birthday deserved a quilt, I then had 2 quilts to make.  I'm pleased to say they were both done by the middle of April and are now warming the toes of their recipients.

This is the one I made for my niece.  I thought I'd taken a photo of the other one but iPhoto tells me I didn't.

In the meantime, the garden got very little attention and the more bedraggled it looked, the less inspiration I had to work there.  After such a lousy, wet summer, autumn has come along with warmish sunshine and coolish nights and I have ventured back into the garden to say hello to all the healthy weeds and try to get a little bit of order happening before winter comes.  I've been getting plant catalogues in the mail with tempting pictures of lovely things I should be planting now but the weeds need to come out first.  I started on Monday this week in the 'snake bed' - here's a photo taken half way through my gardening day -

Check the height of the kikuyu!  It was growing up through the roses and the salvias, had completely covered the poor yellow irises and in the front left corner, under a thatch of kikuyu, I found my treasured little snowflake bulbs pushing up through the soil.  I had to sit down on the step and contemplate their determination and gave myself a small lecture about not letting things get in the way of what I would like to achieve.

Okay . . .

who was it that requested more rain?

Here we are, February has almost finished, which means summer is as well, and to say it has been wet would be an understatement.  Ark building has crossed my mind.

This afternoon has brought another storm.  I stepped out with my camera onto the back verandah as it came racing up from the south.

I wish this showed how quickly the clouds were moving.  Sorry about the sound of the wind.

This is looking south-east towards the city.

Yikes!  Armageddon!

I spent the day on Saturday, between showers, weeding the nut grass from the west garden bed.  Bags and bags of it - and it is already growing again.  I am watching it through the kitchen window and it is laughing at me.  I am hurt and dismayed, then I laugh back with an evil laugh as I think of the big container of deadly poison that sits in the cupboard in the garage under the house.  Maybe, if I persevere, in 15 years or so, it will be gone.

What I did achieve with my Saturday weeding was a sore finger.  It is red and infected and when I bump it on things, which I am doing constantly, it oozes yucky blood stuff out the side of my fingernail.  It even hurts to type this.

Do you think it's the nut grass getting even with me?

So what does it look like outside today . . . .

Right!  Okay, well, unless you want to get extremely damp, how about you retire to the sewing room and get on with that quilt that has been waiting ever so long for a little work done to it. . . .

This little block is called "flying geese".  Or should that be "a flying goose"?

The quilt I am working on requires MANY flying geese!

So I have stitched and trimmed and stitched again and trimmed again, and then I have thumb pressed and then iron pressed and stacked into piles of 10 on the table, till it looks like this -

and then I carefully counted them all - how many have I got?  1,118!!!

And how many do I need?  1,152!!!!!

Oh boo hoo!!!  Am I NEVER going to get there?

Hey Jo, am I still ahead of you? ;o)

Guess what . . . . . I'm back!!

Oh, dear readers, what adventures I've had!!  I rowed across the Pacific Ocean on a plank of wood with two teaspoons for oars, I won and lost a gazillion dollars at the 'Go Fish' tables in Las Vegas, I scraped the peeling paint from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and gave it a nice coat of Dulux Ceiling White, and I walked backwards up Mount Everest wearing flippers!

In the meantime, the weather has turned warm, hot even, and the garden has been a mass of blooms.  The roses have had their first massive flush and are now crying out for a good dead-heading.  Which I ought to be out there doing.

Instead I have been inside working steadily on the creation of a website of family memorabilia.  What started out as a steep learning curve soon turned precipitous and still stretches out in front of me for a little while longer.  It has called for great attention to small details and has been most rewarding and intensely frustrating all at the same time.

In the meantime, in the garden, I have been made redundant as a 'gardener': I am now solely a 'weeder'.  And if I was truthful with myself, I would have admitted long ago that lurking in the garden here and there are some of the most vile, evil weeds that ever I could meet.  I knew they were there, I just chose to ignore the fact.  That can be the case no longer.

In one particular area of the garden, in amongst the oxalis and radium weed, was a type of grassy stuff which I blithely pulled at, mostly just managing to pull the tops off and not disturbing the roots at all.  I decided I would research what it was - it was just such a mat of growth in the garden, I knew it couldn't be something good.  Oh shriek of horror, it's nut grass!  Every little bit of information I find about it out there in cyberspace tells me that once it is in your garden, it is impossible to remove.  That's it, it's just described as 'impossible' - no herbicide, no home remedy, no nothing - it's impossible!  I have tried to prove them wrong by digging it up and going through the soil with my bare hands, trying to remove every last piece of root and every last 'nut'.  One square metre of digging can produce three bucketsful of nut grass.  And still it comes up.

What I don't understand is, if I pulled the tops off some expensive, nursery-bought plant in the garden by mistake, it would instantly die!  Without exception!  Why, oh why then do things such as nut grass simply thrive on being beheaded.

However, it's not all doom and gloom.  The perfume in the air from the roses has been such a treat, things that make me happy have flowered, like the Johnson's Blue geranium, and my dear old mother's irises -

and the mulberry tree has been almost lying on the ground with the weight of fruit.  There will be no jam this season, unless I hurry up and get myself organised.  The only fruit I've picked have gone straight into my mouth.

One day soon I will be back to being a gardener, not a website builder.  Bring on that day!

Ahh winter . . .

when there's just nothing to be done in the garden.

Hang on, I'd better just check that in the Womens Weekly Guide To Doing Nothing In The Garden In Winter -

"Paragraph 1 - Roses must be pruned now."


WHAT??!!  ALL OF THEM??!!

"Paragraph 2 - Spring bulbs will be coming up at this time and care must be taken when stepping into the garden bed to avoid damaging the delicate growth."


But I have to walk on them - how else will I know where they are?

"Paragraph 3 - Now is a good time to get on top of the perennial weeds in the garden.  Weeding must continue at a good pace at this time of the year."


Sigh. . .

Okay, time to take off the hibernation suit (i.e. dressing gown and slippers) and do some work.

Look what my lovely children gave me for my birthday!  I find myself just staring at the yellowness of the daffodil flowers - it is just the most yellow of yellows.  They are gorgeous.  And Olive the orchid (for she needed a name!) has the dearest little oriental face in each of her flowers.  I love them, thank you kids! :o)

And I love freebies!!  And here are two which arrived on my front verandah last week!  Rescued from the Council roadside cleanup by my walking friend, who dearly wanted them for her own verandah but was told in no uncertain terms by her husband that there are already too many chairs on their verandah and that these were not welcome.  So they came to me, just at the right time of the year, when the morning sun streams in onto the verandah and a cup of tea there has become a morning ritual.  Except that I'm lucky if I get a seat!

Thanks boys!  What a shaggy pair of dogs - they need good haircuts and around here, all they get are bad ones!

A hot air balloon company has started having their early morning flights take off from the golf course at the end of our street, and on a number of occasions lately, I've stepped out the front door to hear voices - above me!  It's so amazing, there's just no sound of the balloon, just the people in it talking!

Speaking of talking, here is how you stop talking on your iPhone.  You put it on the roof of the car while you put things in and forget it and drive away and it falls off and another car comes along and runs over it and when you find it and pick it up, except for phone calls, everything else still works - in a sort of fashion.

Okay, time to go pruning!  I'll just take the Band-aids with me.  Wish me luck.