So much has happened!
My main sentiment is that I am alive! Quite a good one for Easter Day.
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| Tulip in window box - something wrong with the flower. |
I had a stem cell transplant for leukaemia in July and it seems to have worked. For a while my immune system was right down so I had to carry on being largely separate from the world.
I needed to build up my physical strength too and work out what to do with my life now it had been extended. Should I gradually take up with the old and familiar or launch into something new? Through lack of inspiration I was gradually drifting back to the old, like picking up stitches instead of casting on with new colours, when two things happened more or less simultaneously. I broke my arm and was put in the 'sheltered' group in the population - ie not to come out of my house for three months, not even to shop or exercise. So for the last few weeks I've done a lot of bewildered sitting around, wincing at the pain in in my arm, listening to the radio at night and dozing a lot in the day.
I needed to build up my physical strength too and work out what to do with my life now it had been extended. Should I gradually take up with the old and familiar or launch into something new? Through lack of inspiration I was gradually drifting back to the old, like picking up stitches instead of casting on with new colours, when two things happened more or less simultaneously. I broke my arm and was put in the 'sheltered' group in the population - ie not to come out of my house for three months, not even to shop or exercise. So for the last few weeks I've done a lot of bewildered sitting around, wincing at the pain in in my arm, listening to the radio at night and dozing a lot in the day.
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| Tomato seedlings and pea plants hardening off outside the house. |
My sling's off now. I have some seedlings growing - trying to do allotmenting-at-a-distance by starting things off then getting other people to weed out some soil and soon to start planting on my behalf. It's not exactly 'gardening' but home grown food may well turn out to be very useful as well as pleasant when we find what the winter floods did to farming and how far the coronovirus will halt imports from abroad.
Very early in the morning - like 5am - I take the rubbish out. No-one is around so I can stand outside my door for a moment and look at the moon. For the rest of the time my world is reduced mostly to my bedroom and the view it gives me of sycamore trees gradually bursting their blossom and leaf buds. There are very few birds - one robin, a group of great-tits, two blackbirds and a couple of crows in a nest. One evening some bats flew around. Bees seem to turn up in the evening to bob between blossoms. There are some dandelions along the wall opposite. One in particular has taken my attention and I count its flowers each day. Hurray for dandelions!
But now . . . the tulips aren't opening. The flower buds are smaller than I'd expected. Maybe I planted small tulips. I can't remember. But the tips of their flowers are shrivelling and they are not opening.
Between my house and the public pavement there's a huge stone slab for a 'path' and about six square feet of concrete edged by a wall. (A useful small space where plants can harden off.) Usually there are people walking up and down on the other side of the wall. It's a friendly place. People stop to say hello and chat. Not now. It's silent. So I poke my head out of the door in daylight. (Daylight!) And step down. A quick photo, a flash of scissors, a quick look at the dandelion that's self seeded in 'the other' box - and dash back in. What a weird life we live now that the best, the friendliest thing to do is never to meet anyone! How strange to be the kind of person that can be killed by earth. How strange that all of us now can be killed by the breath of other humans.
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| Warped tulip flower cut open. |
Neither, of course are causing the demise of the tulips. I'd assumed an insect had got inside. But when I cut open the one I'd 'snipped' expecting to find a grub - nothing.
Anyone got any ideas?
Hope you are all having a happy Easter.
Do tell me your news.
Lucy
36 comments:
It is quite wonderful to hear from you, Lucy, and to know that you have come through this ordeal - only to be launched into another one, I suppose. Like others around the world (perhaps there is some solace in that) we are isolated, but can still get out and walk each day, and can shop at our local store, albeit with a whole lot of rigamarole (spelling ?) to go through. Stay well, and post when you have the time and the inclination. It will always be good to have news of you - and one day isolation will end!
Lucy! It's great to hear from you and have news of your progress. I think we're all learning your technique of looking at one's immediate vicinity and taking heart from the Nature which is there. I think that makes you ahead of the trend!
Hi Lucy, glad to hear things are slowly progressing for you. You have been doing what the rest of the world is doing now, and self isolating. Hope you continue to progress and improve.
No idea on your tulip problem unless it is a virus - a tulip virus not the dreadful one that’s plaguing us a the moment. Keep safe.
Hi Lucy, glad to see that you are back. We have been self isolating for three weeks now and were informed the other day that it will continue to at least May 5th. Gives me lots of time to read and that has been enjoyable. It's wonderful that your stem cell transplant went well.
Take care and stay safe.
Thanks be!
A broken arm is not what I would choose for you now - but you sound chirpy, and as busy as you can be.
We had such a beautiful sunny day today - would love to have walked on the beach. But the garden is good too.
Happy Easter, and may you enjoy many more. I hope you are not finding the instruction to stay indoors too tiresome, we are mostly doing that too - but it's my choice because B is so vulnerable. Glad your arm is on the mend, and I hope your tulips will be soon too 🌷
(Candi)
Your post is definitely a Good News and Bad News one! I bet your "incarceration" is very trying at times, but I'm glad to see that your powers of observation are undiminished. You always did have a good eye for the small details! I can't help with the tulip problem I'm afraid, but by way of empathy let me just say that I have a pot of tulips that were supposed to be a mix of several shapes and colours, but they are all the same - a very insipid pale mauve!
What a great Easter gift - a post and a comment from you! I've had odd tulips do that in the past but never enough of them to make me investigate, though I always suspected some kind of insect to be the cause.
I hope you will find some things to occupy your mind during your enforced incarceration, though I'm finding out for myself how tricky that can be. Take care and stay safe.
Lovely to see you back again, Lucy! What a time you have had, but I think you must be like the unsinkable Molly Brown. A bummer about your arm, but then with this shutdown I guess it makes it easier to stay still and let it heal.I am sorry about the tulips--I have a few that did something similar, but only because my husband offered to plant them, and actually only got them under the mulch! Good intentions, anyway. Sending hugs and best wish across the ocean to you. (Oh, there are actuall 13 siblings in my family---and I'm an American cousine of John of Stargoose and Hanglands).
Despite everything it's good to read such a positive post.
I suspect that your tulip problem is weather related, in particular the mild winter and wet month of February. If possible lift them when they finish flowering and see what the bulbs are like.
It's good to see that you're managing some gardening, even if if it's rather limited. Take care. xx
Such good news from you Lucy aside from the broken arm and withered tulip buds - the latter I suspect may be a hunger for nutrients. You have been living what we are all now having to get used to and you've shown us how to look closer to home and make the most of what we see. Thank you!
It's good to see you back in form Lucy. Your writing is so full of melancholy,perhaps a reflection of your recent times and the times we live through now. Your description of the broken arm made me wince, so goodness knows how it made you feel on top of everything else.
I'm growing some a chilli peppers plant from a single pepper pod brought back from Greece and left in the garage to dry out. Gardening is very therapeutic except for cutting the damned grass. Stay stay and don't overdo it.
The new shoots sprouting out look hopeful. It sounds as if you are recovering nicely, thankfully, although this most certainly would be a challenge, especially during these times. You are very fortunate, indeed, to have found a stem cell match. I know of someone who could not, even with many siblings and strangers willing to help.
wow! Lucy!! so great to find your post pop up on my reading list, and your comment on last month's post. Each tree-following visit, I have wondered what was up with you. Winter has returned to Laramie, but I'm off to LaBonte Park, hopefully will find a tree to follow for 2020.
Looking forward to more photos from L&L in Halifax.
Hello David. It does seem that if it's not one thing it's another - and life gets more extraordinary and more improbable and more unpredictable in stages. Interesting though. All sorts of experiences one never expected.
Hello Imperfect and Tense. And thank you. Yes. I have made a particular point of noticing and celebrating what is immediately around me - often things which might otherwise go unremarked. I'm sorry lives are being disrupted and sometimes desolated at present but also glad that others will be able to feel that special warmth from finding something small and realising it is beautiful or interesting and not insignificant at all.
Hello Linda. It's true. Yet also remarkable that despite being 'isolated' and now 'shielded' I have internet friends like you all over the world and that certainly enriches things and makes confinement more bearable. It is like walking through the screen to somewhere else completely.
Hello Sue. I'd had the idea that tulip viruses made pretty patterns on the petals rather than the flowers shrivel. This morning (14th April 2020) the flowers are completely dried out and hopeless. Looking forward to alliums popping up in the same boxes now.
Hello Bill. Glad you are enjoying the extra time for reading. Yes. I am very fortunate with the way the stem cell transplant went. Nothing was guaranteed!
Hello Diana. It must be awful living near to the sea and not being allowed to walk on the beach. Wonderful to have the garden though. My windowsills are having to serve as my garden at present. Life is ok but I do miss fresh air.
Hello Looking for Blue Sky. My arm is on the mend but the tulips have definitely had it - at least for this year. Hope you manage to carry on finding ways to entertain your two. You certainly won't be having the kind of restful time part of the world is enjoying during this enforced shut-down.
Hello Mark. Your tulips do sound dreary. Do tulips revert to dull after a few years? A bit like the offspring of aquilegea? (Some poppies can come out a horrid pale mauve too.)
Hello John. And thank you for your encouragement. This is part of the trouble with small-scale window-box gardening. It becomes all or nothing. I think there are five tulips in all and they are all dud. In other words - the 'all' is 'nothing'!
Hello Granny Sue. I had to look up the Unsinkable Molly Brown. I don't think my life is as successful or as interesting but I was glad to find out about her! You think the tulips might not be deep enough? That is certainly possible. They have flowered in this place previously but it's possible that they have pushed themselves upwards. In window boxes they can't go too deep in the first place. Maybe, depending on what life is like in the autumn (!) I'll tip out the boxes later in the year and replant the bulbs in fresh potting compost.
Hello Flighty
Having just said to Granny Sue that I'd get the bulbs out, if I could, in the autumn, maybe I'll see if I can get someone to take them out now for me. Tulip leaves take a lot of space and I'd like to put some seeds in. I have nasturtiums in mind.
Hello Laura. I seem to get closer and closer to home! Veritably stuck to it now!
Volunteers are doing my shopping (isn't that wonderful and amazing?). I'd put baby bio on my shopping list then took it off again, thinking people would have enough trouble in the supermarket without having to look for plant food. But lack of nutrients is perfectly possible. I took out some of the soil and put in some new at one point (have lost track of when) but haven't made a complete change yet.
Hello Phil. And thank you. I don't have a lawn to look after but would have expected mowing the grass to be very satisfying. You can see where you've been, can make patterns on the ground and it smells brilliant.
Hello Penelope. It's not at all assured that people needing a stem cell transplant will have a match found for them and I am very fortunate. Family didn't make a near enough match and the first person they found on the list was themselves ill. Fortunately they found a second match and it worked. An un-named stranger to whom I owe my life. It's a strange thought - that my body no longer makes the blood which was original to me but now makes the blood of someone I don't know and will probably never meet!
Hello Hollis. I've decided to follow two trees I can see from my doorstep. I can't approach them while I am in the 'shielded' group (no leaving the house at all for three months; other people have to do the shopping!) but I can photograph their branches. I am quite excited to be joining in again.
Happy Easter. Lovely to hear from you and to read your descriptions of your landscape.
Tulips closed up like our towns and cities. Usually the deer eat mine. I'm glad your on the mend and had good practice self-isolating. Be well!
Hello Happy Mouffetard. It's good to be back!
Hello Colleen. I hope our cities recover better than my tulips - which are now desiccated and entirely drained of colour.
So good to see a post from you Lucy 😄 What rotten luck breaking your arm on top of everything else you have been through. Funny how you take things for granted until the rug is pulled out unexpectedly from under your feet. The world has suddenly become a lot smaller for many of us. I'm not sure what's happened to your tulip but I would be looking underneath when you can. Take care.
Hello Anna. The time will come when I will have to tip out the window boxes (there are two) and sort out what is to stay and what is to go and give all the 'stayers' new earth. A problem (apart from me not being allowed to spend time out at the front of the house and having to avoid earth that has had the chance to develop all the ordinary moulds it usually contains) is that they are very high and very heavy. They are level with the front door but the front door is itself up steps so when standing on the ordinary ground they are almost above my head.
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