THE MEANING OF LIFE?

Dandelion Leaf in My Window Box
April 20th 2020

An older friend, charming but prone to gloom, once told me the only difference between a long life and a short one is that you do the same things three times instead of once.

In 2019 intensive care 'outreach' came to my bedside three times to advise nurses how to look after me. My temperature raged. My blood pressure sank. They monitored carefully in case my organs decided to shut down.

Sycamore seedling in my window box.
Unfortunately this will have to be taken out but for the moment I can be pleased
 I am being visited by a tree.
April 20th 2020

In 2019 two rounds of pretty heavy chemo didn't work. Even after I'd had a stem cell transplant, the leukaemia was still there. The consultant advised me that things did not look good. But the new stem cells settled in and I was given a trial drug 'on compassionate grounds'. Result! the leukaemia is in retreat. If it is still here, it is here in such a small amount it cannot be detected. This, note, is not the same as a definite 'cure' but it's pretty good.

Dead Daffodil Flower
20th April 2020

Then along come the corono virus to disrupt all our lives. All the immunities bestowed by childhood illnesses and inoculations were swept away by the transplant and my ability to fight off infections is weakened by the anti-cancer drug. I am, to put it mildly, a bit vulnerable. The government has put me in the 'shielded' group. (It's even sent me a food parcel!) This is partly to save my life and partly to save the lives of others. If I land up in hospital I could be in the way of someone else who needs to be there. I can't leave the house for three months. Oh joy! Even more time to contemplate the purpose of existence.

Obviously, I haven't come up with any brilliant ideas. I can't even work out what I want to do with my own life let alone understand the purpose of  'life' in general. But I do keep thinking about my friend's idea that we merely repeat ourselves.

With all this going on, I've still not really 'moved in'. Others would have been more efficient but I still have things in boxes and in odd and 'wrong' places. It's quite entertaining. I don't really know what I still own and what I disposed of before moving from Dorset to Halifax. Things keep turning up. The other day I was looking for a missing memory stick when I came across a package of writing from when I was at Junior School.

In it, along with a little 'book' I'd written about the reign of the Stuarts and another about cats which included an incomplete chapter on 'Methods of Tiger Hunting' (!!!!!) was a short page and a half about wild flowers. I present it to you here for your entertainment. It's a sort of proto-type Loose and Leafy. I don't seem to have changed my mind or my ideas since I was . . . somewhere between seven and eleven years old. On the one hand it's a good find; good to discover one has been consistent, a current of interest over a lifetime. On the other . . . . maybe all I am doing is saying the same thing over and over. Is this what my life amounts to? What, I ask myself in the spirit of enquiry rather than negativity, is the point? If I had died aged twelve (not at the time an option) would I have contributed any less to the world than I've achieved in the decades since? Perhaps the answer is simply that there is a virtue in repetition. Perhaps some things are worth saying over and over? I don't know.

Certainly I'm currently experiencing the truth of something I am always advocating, only in reverse; that fresh air and exercise make the mind as well as the body lither, stronger and happier. Cut off from both I'm growing sluggish and dull. I feel queasy and faint really easily. I'm having to work at not being miserable. I've decided to be delighted in the small functionings of my brain. "Wow! I remembered something! How did I do that?!" I'm trying to persuade myself that walking up and down the three flights of stairs in my tall, thin house is a fair swap for hills and moors.

And perhaps I am truly having to settle with the idea that the sole purpose, the main aim, the highest and most worthy career goal of my life is to persuade everyone that dandelions are wonderful . . . and that this revelation is worth repeating endlessly; way more than my allocated three times!

* * * 

P.S.
Because I live in England I have been in the care of the NHS. On behalf of the country as a whole it has spent thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds on keeping me alive and never once has anyone asked me if I'm worth it. I am a citizen, therefore I am cared for and my treatment is free. I am not a patriotic kind of person but I am bewildered when I realise having a system like this is not the aspiration of every country in the world. Goodness, am I grateful! I am hoping someone in the NHS will think preserving the life of a repetitive dandelion advocate is truly commensurate with the expense.

P.P.S.
The stem cells which saved my life were donated anonymously through the Anthony Nolan Trust. If you are between 16 and 30 years old you too can become a donor and save someone's life. If you are over 30 you are still able to help save lives through financial donations. The link is to the UK site but it operates a shared register with other countries too. I'm not sure how many, Germany is certainly one of them.

P.P.P.S.
In case you aren't able to read the text in the photographs, I've copied it out here - preserving the spelling!

"Wild Flowers"

"Wild flowers are often just as beautifull as garden flowers. When a wild flower is caught trespassing in a garden, it is normally uprooted and thrown away, but when it is found otherwise, the same plant is praised, picked, and taken home to decorate the house. Nature is one of the wonders of science, going on year after year, giving us food and delight. Sometimes when the words Vegitation or Vegitable are mentioned, our minds imediatly think of things like carots or cabages, so it is a good idea to remember the game anamal, VEGITABLE, and mineral.

If you look hard, even in the busy streets there are wild flowers. Dandelions grow tucked away in a crack under a wall. Mosses, ferns, and grasses are here and there, sometimes moss grows in between the  paving stones, but the best place to look is in the country, there you don't need to look very hard, in winter it is not so good but nearly always the dead remains of plants can be found.

Different plants grow in different types of soil and climate, so before going out into the country to find any particular plant, it is best to check that you know where to find it."

* * *

Link
Anthony Nolan Trust

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Linking to Nature Notes at Rambling Woods

TREE FOLLOWING BY STANDING STILL

In case you've missed it (unlikely given that it looms so large) I'm on the list of those the government has asked to stay indoors for three months. Not just steer clear of people when going shopping or exercising but I MUSTN'T GO OUT AT ALL! However, the letter also explains a concession - I can stand on my doorstep to get some air as long as no-one comes near me.

So what happens if I stand on my doorstep and look up? This!

And what's the name of this blog? Why! Loose and Leafy!

And what's more loose and leafy than the view of these two sycamore trees? One busy blossoming and one bursting into leaf. In time, someone may help me be more precise about what kind of sycamores they are. Or maybe I should call one of them a maple? I don't know. But I do know from previous years that both have sycamore type leaves but behave differently in terms of what happens when.

So (another 'so') . . . so I'M FOLLOWING A TREE AGAIN! (Or two. Simultaneously.)

I won't be able to go to their trunks. Not now. But I'll be sure of getting the same angle every time - for I'm only 'allowed' to stand in the one place. And if I'm still stuck in my doorway come autumn, I'm sure some of their leaves will drift down for closer inspection.

Other bloggers are following trees too. Go to Pat's blog The Squirrelbasket to find out more. And maybe join in?

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HAPPY EASTER! THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE TULIPS!

So much has happened!

My main sentiment is that I am alive! Quite a good one for Easter Day.

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.

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.

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

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TREES IN A TREE

Hello. This is an 'I'm still here, really!' sort of post. I have had the bone marrow stem cell transplant and am waiting to see if it's 'worked'. So far, so good - but nothing is definite yet. What a lot of anxious waiting!

But I'll put some pictures here of one of my favourite local trees. Not only is it huge and rugged but it supports an extra burden of plants and even trees growing along one of its lower branches.

There's a magnificent fern.

And a dandelion.

A sycamore.

(Which is not as sickly as it looks. I adjusted the image to make it easier to see against a background of other leaves and managed to sap it of all its nutrients in the process.)

And a . . . beech? alder? Anyone?

I think the host tree is a lime . . . . but I'll be in hospital for several more weeks so we'll need to leave that hanging.

Hope you are all well.

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WILD FLOWERS IN HALIFAX

When I first visited Halifax - looking to see if it would be a good place to live - I was struck by the amount of ragwort. It sprouted out of pavements and walls and old chimneys and public planters. In particular there was a long embankment of it between a car park and part of the busy road system that skirts the quieter and partly pedestrianised town centre. I can't remember what was on this embankment last year but it wasn't ragwort. Earlier this year it was a yellow sea of oil-seed rape flowers. I assumed this was random. Who plants ragwort? Who sows oil-seed rape apart from farmers?

There's loads of ragwort around town this year too. . . but the bank is currently like this. Someone, surely, has turned it into a wildflower oasis - and bees are loving it. So am I. So, I guess, are the hundreds of people who walk past and maybe the thousands of people who drive by in cars and lorries or who look out from buses.

A health update:

Two possible bone marrow / stem cell donors have been identified so I am hoping to return to hospital for a transplant some time in the first part of July. Chemo has knocked back the leukaemia so I am feeling remarkably well but an underlying mutant something or other called FLT3 (I really don't understand what this is) is getting worse - so there's a bit of a race on. A drugs company is allowing me to take a medicine that is not yet on general release to help keep it at bay while I wait to return to hospital. What a weird and surreal life. It's very hard to realise all this frightening stuff really is happening.

In the meantime . . . I try to take up the reins of ordinary life. I wish I enjoyed housework! And I wish the beautiful grasses which have invaded my allotment weren't so tough, luxuriant and profuse. I have some very little tomato seedlings, runner bean plants and patti-pan squashes in pots. Radishes have germinated on the plot but not yet carrots. I mean, they should have but I've sown everything late. It will be nice when the weather becomes appropriate to June. Then though I will probably complain it's too hot!

Thank you whoever is in charge of this bank. Halifax, it turns out, really is a very good place to live.

(Can someone say what the white daisy flowers are? I wondered chamomile but that doesn't seem quite right. And what is the purple flower in the second to last photo?)

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