only 32 days to midwinter

There's the good and the not so good but what the heck. It's November, what do you expect.

The good news. We spent most of the weekend potting small tree sapplings and then putting up notices online and by hand on the garden gate and throughout Sunday, people came to pick them up. Once upon a time, these sapplings were squirrel food storage, now long forgotten. I checked and no, squirrels are not into planting trees for future harvest. They just bury too much stuff and also, they are forgetful, which, if you happen to be a growing forest, is a nice touch of evolution but when you have a medium sized garden in suburbia, the number of trees you can grow is limited.

Next, I potted most of the aloe vera offspring, all the small bits that grow around the big ones. I'll give them some time in the greenhouse to grow roots and then they'll go the way of the sapplings.

After much deliberating, we moved all the plumeria into the big basement room where there's almost no daylight.

The bad news, I divided up the amaryllis shoots into individual pots and now they look miserable and maybe won't flower at all. 

Also in bad news, I am still working on that cold. I tried ignoring it and went for a long walk in the rain and did some yoga and cycling around for an hour or three - not all on the one day - but this cold is of the stubborn variety it seems.

Almost forgot the other good news which arrived in the shape of an official letter from the back and beyond of County Sligo in the far northwest of Ireland, which is where the Department of Social Affairs (pension, contributory) has been abandoned relocated in an effort to decentralise things away from Dublin. Anyway, the good people inform me, in a long letter written both in English and as Gaeilge, that I am entitled to a pension as of November of last year and that I will therefore first of all receive an arrears payment, followed by monthly instalments. Hurray for paying PRSI tax back in the dark ages while working for pennies in the worker's co-op. I am now able to afford a large pizza for three every month. Or maybe one for two including drinks. And since I am currently unable to digest pizza and don't partake of the drinks, this is even better. I will be rich!

Another bit of not good news is that the weight loss has moved from discreet, which was deemed acceptable, to concerning. But I tell them it's probably an outlier, a bad month, that kind of thing. This was met with disbelief. Instead, I had to provide another stool sample to check on flare-up control, with mediocre results. I may be looking into a change of monoclonal antibody, which is tedious but still preferable to surgery. Or maybe not. Some days, I get a brief and sudden taste of some almost forgotten food right there in my mouth as if I'm eating it. Odd things, like bland chicken breast, or, yesterday, warm German custard. German custard  - Vanillesosse - is usually runny, a thick sauce poured over overly sweetend desserts. Even with a healthy digestive system, I wouldn't really eat or cook either but who knows, maybe one day. Which is to say, I am still hopeful that this digestive conundrum will come to an end eventually. 

Temperatures are in the single digits (Celsius) and there has been snow in the distance which means rain and more rain here. Four and a half weeks to midwinter.

The news from Europe are that Europe stares war in the face because Trump is aligned with Putin who wants to crush Ukraine, and also maybe the Balkans and Poland and the governments of Sweden and Finland are now instructing households on how to prepare for war. While we watched the footage from hīkoi mō te Tīriti, yesterday's march for the treaty, in Wellington, NZ, knowing that our family is somewhere there in the happy, peaceful crowd, we felt such relief knowing that where they are, neither Putin nor Trump can touch them, yet. And that maybe, maybe, maybe, a strong indigenous community will continue to keep this corner of the world safe and alert.