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.
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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!
I have window boxes outside my kitchen and living room. Things are rather crammed in - good because I am enjoying a few flowers at a time over a long period instead of a dramatic display from one variety which then has to be swapped completely for something else. There have been tiny daffodils and big daffodils, tiny iris and red cyclamen flowers. Currently there should be tulips . . . but something has gone wrong. Even before I was advised not to leave the house, the window boxes had been left to their own devices. I am at risk from the moulds which live in earth. Imagine having to avoid earth. And with a broken arm I'd not been able to lift the can high enough to water them. Rain blowing in this direction had to suffice. It has, until now 'worked'; a cheerful nod to the passing season.
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
