Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

I’ve always thought of hibiscus as a tropical flower, but over the past few years I’ve noticed several of my neighbours plant the bush successfully right here in not-even-remotely-tropical Ontario. I love the big, bright, showy flowers that hibiscus put out so I thought I’d take a chance and plant one in my own garden. That was in the spring of 2018 and I took great care to give the plant the best start possible. I chose a nice sunny spot, amended the soil with horse manure and peat before planting and then hand watered it twice a day for weeks. By early July when we left for the east coast the plant had settled in and was growing well so I was expecting to see flowers when we got home.

Then our return home was delayed and delayed again and then delayed some more after that. By the time we got home it was the end of September and the flowers were finished and gone. The big, beautiful flowers were bountiful – so I was told – but I never got to see them. I had lots of people describe them to me and every single person made a circle with their hands to show me their size, but no-one had a picture to share. I’ve had to wait all the way until today to see what my big, red hibiscus flowers look like. I won’t describe them to you. I took a photo instead.

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

©voyager, all rights reserved

©voyager, all rights reserved

This pretty pink sedum plant lives along one of our regular walking routes and I’ve been waiting for the colours to emerge. I haven’t seen it in a week or so and was happily surprised today with its progress. Just look at all those delicate pinks jumbled together like a bag of confetti. This plant is throwing its own garden party!

Jack’s Walk

Rose of Sharon ©voyager, all rights reserved

It’s a beautiful day in my neighborhood and there are still plenty of flowers left to make me smile. This Rose of Sharon has been making me smile most of the summer. It’s been in full bloom for weeks and shows no signs of slowing down in the shorter days and cooler nights of September. I spend a lot of time admiring this particular Rose of Sharon because it lives at a home with a dog and Jack insists on a long, slow, careful sniff of their hedge every time we walk this way. It’s Jack’s Walk so I try to never hurry him along, but it’s always nice when he stops places that I can appreciate, too.

Jack’s Walk – We’re Back

©voyager, all rights reserved

Hello, hello! Jack and I are back.

Our situation really hasn’t changed, though. My mother is still hovering in the shadowlands and I’m still spending most of my time at her nursing home. Mom beat the infection that began her decline and she did so without antibiotics. Her Dr. and I decided to withhold antibiotics because they would prolong her death, but her body didn’t get the memo and took care of it anyway. Now, she’s bedridden with heart failure, weakened, confused and barely taking anything by mouth, but she’s full of fear and not ready to die. She has near constant anxiety and calls out for help all the time, even when I’m sitting with her holding her hand. When you ask her what help she needs she tells you “I don’t know” or she says nothing at all. It’s difficult for her and for all of her caregivers because we feel helpless to keep her calm.

Mom’s pain is mostly well controlled, except for when she needs to be turned. That’s a painful process, but staff have it timed half an hour after her morphine injection and she generally falls asleep quickly afterward. She has medicine for the anxiety too, but it often takes 2 doses to settle her. That’s likely because it’s a part of her personality and not a new symptom. Mom has borderline personality disorder (not just my opinion – she’s had at least 3 psychiatrists tell her this over the years) and she’s struggled with anxiety most of her life. The calling out for help actually started about a year ago when she was hospitalized with pneumonia and congestive heart failure. Back then, on one of her better days, she told me that she needed help because death was stalking her. I think that same fear is what’s driving her behavior now. Staff here are great, but they don’t have the time to give mom as much reassurance as she needs, so I’ve been spending my days hand-holding, forehead kissing and doing my level best to calm her fears in this final stage of life.

So, that’s our basic situation and it means that Jack and I are walking closer to home and often at odd hours. It could be like this for while, too, so I’ve finally organized wifi for mom’s room and we’ll see how it goes.

This out of focus photo is from yesterday when Jack and I went to the Vansittart Pond. It’s fuzzy because I’m laughing and trying to back away from Bubba who really wants to wipe himself off on my pants. He’s covered in mud up to his neck from racing through the mud chasing frogs. It was awesome. The frogs were pop, pop, popping and plop, plop, plopping in all directions. Dozens of them, like a wave moving through a stadium crowd, down the length of the shore. Jack’s tail was at high mast and he was wearing his goofiest grin and when it was all over he was so happy that I just couldn’t get mad about the mud.

Holidays: Sagrada Familia 2

Last time we looked at the front, now it’s time to enter. I momentarily feared I was going to be shot at the security checkpoint because I jumped towards my backpack as they were trying to open it. But the nice people were trying to open a backpack full of camera equipment holding it so that my lenses would fall out. They afterwards agree that it’s a nice camera…

Anyway, when you enter you walk past a gate with flower and plant decoration, complete with assorted beetles. I couldn’t find out if there was something special about this fellow, but it was polished shiny from all the hands, so it seemed customary to caress it as well.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Visiting in the evening is amazing as the sun shines directly through the windows, basking everything in light and colours. We were extremely lucky with the weather. In Mataró it had rained all morning and when we set out, it was still cloudy. In Barcelona the clouds tore up, the air was clear and fresh and the sun shone all evening. When we got back we saw that in Mataró the rain had returned with a vengeance…

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Spider Carnage

This weekend I had to mainly 1) prepare firewood for winter and 2) finish my first commissioned knife.

The customer had a look at the knife and I had to adjust the handle a bit so it fits in their hand. No biggie, but it was three hours of additional work all the same since I had to re-shape, re-polish and re-buff the endcap as well. When making knives that are not customer-specific I have to try and make the grips more universal sized and shaped. Or perhaps in different sizes?

Now the knife handle is being coated with boat lack, which is not a process that lends itself to being photographed. As far as the knife goes, you won’t see any new pictures until its finished. But next weekend, while the lacquer is drying and hardening, I am going to make the leather sheath and hopefully make som worthwhile pictures of that. I have not done too much of leatherwork yet, it will be fun.

In the meantime, I only can post a picture I made at work with my phone a few days ago. A gruesome image of one spider devouring another one. See below the fold. I have no idea what species or even genera they might be, but what I do find interesting that it is the slender-legged and fragile looking spider who is doing the devouring and the buff-looking hairy beast is the devoured.

[Read more…]