The greenhouse is filling up.
It's magnolia week in the neighbourhood.
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The garden is starting to show off. Most of the seedlings are planted out, the potatoes are in the ground and I did assist in almost all of the work. Now we wait and see and collect kill any snails and slugs.
The peach trees are flowering, the apricot is already finished flowering and the plums, pears and apples are about to. This is what's called the vineyard peach, with small deep red furry fruit, excellent for jam.
Last week, I spent a couple of hours on a guided tour across one of our city's cemeteries visiting the fields where unknown displaced persons and forced labourers from the nazi era are buried. It was long and gruesome, thankfully we could sit down from time to time, and when we reached the section where the children of the young, mostly Ukranian and Polish women, who were forced to work in local industry during the war, were buried, I almost broke down. None of the children born to these women (often as a result of rape) lived for more than a couple of weeks, months and it was nuns who "looked after" them and let them die. I don't know why I continuously do this, go to these lectures and tours but now I have my name down to help with a project digitizing local data of victims and survivors of nazism.
It's been a year now since I retired and surprise, surprise, we have neither gone bankrupt nor tried to poison each other. In fact, it has turned out rather well, I am still not inclined to take on any of the free-lance jobs I continue to be offered and wish it would stop altogether. I also started to enjoy going to bed really late and/or getting up in time to listen to the dawn chorus. There have even been days when I had three cups of coffee. But the dreaded fatigue, together with a couple of other symptoms and lab results has come back, all of which indicating that the current medication has possibly run its course and I have to face the next available magic potion with its side effects. I am seriously fed up with all of this but needs must and always look on the bright side, etc.,
Worse, however, is the decline of my trusted bike, which has me currently searching for a necessary spare part that is no longer commercially available.
The grandchild has been sharing their reasons for feeling anxious right now. We counted on our fingers, new house, new school, new friends, loss of old neighbours, growing out of favourite clothes, having to get used to new clothes and several more and we almost ran out of fingers. Then it was time for showing some drawing and cutting-out and reading skills and of course, there's the dog.
. . . when you’re born, you’re born with a big lack. You’ve got this body that needs food, needs clothing, needs shelter, needs medicine, and you’re not born with an entitlement to those things. If you were really entitled to them, they would come on their own. The fact that they seem to come on their own when we’re children is because our parents are looking after us, but that means they have to go out and do extra work just to provide for this big, gaping hole they’ve just given birth to. And so as you grow up as a human being, you not only carry this huge load of needs around with you, but you also carry a big debt to the goodness, the work of other people. It’s important to keep that in mind.
I've not seen a magnolia bloom yet, but will try to get out and about sometime soon. Thanks for sharing yours! Sorry to hear about your bike. Our transportation needs must be met adequately for our life styles. I have a much younger friend who doesn't do anything but walk and use public transport...and believe me, she can hike about anywhere. I depend upon a car (too hilly and too hard for my breathing to bike here.) It costs a lot though, so I try to combine different stops on each trip. Some stops are to take photos of flowers!
ReplyDeleteThank you for all the things I needed to hear and see this morning as I go about, here and there, reminded of "the goodness, the work of other people."
ReplyDeleteMy Amaryllis bulb which hadn't bloomed for years generated two more bulbs and then another in its small pot. Today the first of at least five (!) buds is slowly opening. It stays indoors during the fall and winter and spends much of spring, all of summer and some of fall on my porch.
Spring here now is frogs singing at night, robins and other birds singing all day long, fruit trees flowering, and Canada geese arriving.
Something prompted me to revisit Paula's House of Toast where I found the beautiful letters Paula and Darrell wrote to each other at the beginning of their long-lasting relationship.
What kind of tree is the one that is espaliered? It's so delicate and beautiful up against that white wall.
ReplyDeleteThe children and women that died, it's horrific. How can people do that? Allow a baby to die, in front of them. Kudos to you for listening, seeing the story of these people who have been forgotten by most.
I'm glad that the two of you are surviving your retirement and that no deaths have occurred, yet:) I'm starting to sort out my life post retirement and it's busy and I'm ok with letting go of nursing.
That's good that your grandchild can name what causes them anxiety, so often people don't know. I think I'll try this with jack.
My middle daughter had the same problem with her med, and her MS has relapsed. Sigh. I wish I could fix this for her.
Codex: Why do this? So that my generation and the ones that followcan visit these places and museums and archives and learn what isn't being taught.
ReplyDeleteI can only do it in small doses.
Your greenhouse is glorious! Oh, those healthy-looking plants! Your garden will be glorious, I know.
ReplyDeleteSabine, the fact that humans can be so horrible, so cruel and bloody to each other makes me feel as if we are a failed species. Your constant work in these areas gives me hope though.
Change of any kind always produces anxiety. And yet it's life's only constant!
ReplyDeleteIt's magnolia week (or weeks) here too!