Fruits of our labor...

Here are my raised bed gardens in late May.

We started the second phase of our raised bed vegetable gardens this April.  After my surgery in February I was unable to lift, dig or carry anything until May.  Phase two of our second year garden was smaller than we had planned but was still beautiful, productive and educational.

It was the year without a summer.  Rain, lack of sunshine and below average (read "cold") temperatures in New England took its toll on our region's food production.  We had so many cold, rainy days in June that it delayed the growth of our warm loving crops.  

The average temperature for June 2009 in the Nashua, NH area was 63.3 degrees, on June 1st it was 39 degrees in some areas.  The precipitation was on average 6.56", 2.56" above normal.  A late frost killed most of the flowers on the strawberry crop, so regionally strawberries were hard to find.  In our garden they were non-existent.  Our basil, tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplants were very late to start.  We ultimately lost the tomatoes and potatoes to the blight...we did get two eggplants and quite a few basil, but fall came early and it has already snowed.

I feel like our raised beds (3'w x 14' l x 18" h) helped keep the vegetables from flooding.  Last year the back garden was under water from all of the rain, the deep hardpan and the possible granite ledge under the yard... The soil was warmer too from the sun heating up the entire bed.  It was definitely easier to weed.  

We built a compost bin out of pallets from the local dump.  A local farmer sells composted cow manure.  His cows are raised naturally.  No antibiotics nor growth hormones.  Grass fed in our community.  We filled the raised beds with the manure and mulched with last years left over straw.  The straw is not a local product (Canada and NY) but we had it, we use it (about 5 bales a year) and it works.

My raised bed gardens in late June.

My garden and chicken yard in early October.  The chickens are molting and not laying as many eggs per day right now.  You can see our spiral rock garden.  We build a half moon bed farther to the right.  The back garden has been stripped bare by the chickens.  The purple kale look like prehistoric plants because we have been picking leaves from the bottom up.  Yummy.

I have dreams of starting a campaign for food justice in our community.  This is my beginning.  I feel like my health will hold out, I will spend the winter preparing and when spring comes around again...

Reflections of a whirlwind...

Summer....

New beginnings....

Flowers, herbs, legumes, grass....

Ducks, chickens, bunnies, children...

Birthday cakes, vanilla ice cream with dinosaur sprinkles...

Swings in trees, leaves, solid maple trunks....

Sweet, delicious, green, bountiful peas....my favorite garden vegetable this year.

Salamanders in the grass.

Covered bridges...

Instead of city lights, wooden boards...

Fresh picked apples...

Eleven pounds of late season blueberries, local corn and homegrown food...

Autumn raspberries....

Autumn is here, the summer flew past, the leaves are changing, the air is crisp, the rains are cold, Jack Frost has come and the gardens are drifting off to sleep.  

New seasons of life, thankful, peaceful, quiet, warm, filling.

The moments of my day

The moments of my day seem to drift in and out of my awareness.  I haven't touched down in a few weeks.  I have been a flutter of activity, of dreams fulfilled, struggles realized, relationships changed, growing, constricting, like my breath of late.  I have been whirling around in the top of my head with goals and expectations.  Not having to go to Boston has freed my schedule and so I filled it with visions of my garden, my sewing room, my son, the girls, the animals, my husband, my family, the projects - the many exciting projects.  Just what you would hope summer should be, the ideal feeling you hope for in the snowy February landscape...unfurling before my eyes.

Henry's peonies, they are already in bloom.  They are on the southern side of his house, sheltered and growing along a dark blue wall in full sun.  Or is it just Henry's touch?

I took a walk to my neighbor's house, a stones throw across the dirt road.  Henry just celebrated his 95th birthday and his 70th wedding anniversary.  A life time and more...he still cuts his grass, weeds his garden and plants his vegetables.  He planted the Iris' about 40 years ago or so in an old cistern that was used to water cows.  A pipe ran into the cistern from the spring up the hill.  I love that Henry just lets things be, lets them grow the way they will, rust, lean, weather without emotion, just acceptance.  There used to be a huge cow barn where the Birch are now.  

Henry has lived here in this house on the edge of the hollow for 50 years, he visits his wife every day in the home and comes back to his little house.  He gave me a collection of old hat pins his wife had tucked away.  He told me she loved going to yard sales.  He smiled a sad smile and said, "Poor Jenny".  Life changes, the world around us changes, sometimes the change is unrecognizable or unnoticed or seemingly unimportant until one day we find something to measure that change.  

My life is so completely filled with ideas, dreams, projects, people, activity, movement.  I sometimes see Henry take his quiet, slow stroll down the road a bit and turn to come back.  He walks in the yard or sits in his old chair under the barn and listens to his radio while I flutter around in my yard with the animals or in the garden.  Life is so different for him.  He lives alone, his house is very quiet, very still.  It seems a luxury to me to have time to sit and read a book or listen to the radio just to hear it.  When does that change happen?   The change from busy to quiet?  The change from not having enough time to waiting for something to happen?  Henry tells me it is lonely, I try to visit him every day.  I hug him deep and full every time, it has become our ritual.  Fill his world with touch, with embrace, my tiny, meager effort to fill some of the space.

When I lived in California I had an elderly neighbor, he had lost his wife just a few years before and lived alone.  He often left his door open and I would wave to him while I bustled by with all my stuff.  I started visiting with him on Wednesday evenings and we talked for hours about his life, about the old days, about his lovely wife.  He told me he left his door open in the hopes that he would see someone pass by.  He spent most of his time waiting.  Waiting for the meals he would take at the buffet down the street with his friends.  He would wake early, read the paper, meet his friends for breakfast, take a nap, go back, meet them for lunch, mill around, leave his door open, listen to a ball game, sleep, dream about his wife and wait for Wednesday evenings.  Sweet Harry Anderson, my dear friend. 

Simplicity, that is what life is about, beauty, peace, love, friendship and 

it is oh so sweet.

An ancient Butternut tree.  Henry said the squirrels planted it in the wall, it is still hanging on and still producing nuts.  Life is funny that way.  It would seem impossible that such a big tree, such an old tree, growing crooked and half fallen on its knees could still unfurl its leaves, reach up to the sun, grow new branches and yield sweet fruit.  It is fitting that it grows in Henry's yard, his friend for so many years, leaning to the south, still yearning for the sun and feeding the world around it.  Henry feeds our hearts.

The rain just started, it is a percussion of sound with cool air....

Lilacs at sunset

So I don't even know how to begin to explain a deep dream come true.  I was given a gift.  I opened my heart to the energy of the universe, I asked in whispers to see life more fully, to breathe more deeply, to feel it all, to be, now, present, awake.

You never really know in what package your gift will arrive.  If you are really open to the gift, you take it all.  My gift came wrapped in fear, a threat of death, a fading away, a son losing his mother, a family losing their girl.  I heard a story about my future that seemed unbelievable, sad, not a dream I had dreamed in the grass looking up into the sky so long ago.  Here I am in the place I dreamed, the heart I dreamed I would be growing but not this ending....and still I accepted it.  My heart grew bigger, my eyes clearer, my mind more quiet, spirit open to every possibility and still I felt thankful, grateful, sad and joyful.  I wrapped my arms around the package and cared for all of it, the gift, the wrapping, the box, all delicately carried under my arm and I said yes.

I looked farther, I stepped in and reached up.  Monday as I breathed into my unfolding day at Mass General in Boston I smiled at my circumstance and accepted it.  It was a great letting go. We met with Dr. Norbert Liebsch to discuss my 38 day proton beam radiation treatment.  I smiled, listened, and wrote down my questions.  He is so amazing, professional, gentle, generous, informed, on the ball and down to earth.  He told me a different story, a different version of my cancer, my chondrosarcoma, a version completely different than the one I had heard twice at two different places at different times.  There is no urgency, there is no impending doom, no sign of the cancerous tumor left, no re-growth, no fear of metastasizing. No need for radiation...

Take a breath, wait 6 months, get new scans, live my life, open to the hope that this is not the time.  I felt elated, relieved and grateful.  I was already so grateful for the journey.  I have been so very in the moment for months, I feel everything, so viscerally, every cell, every molecule, every heartbeat and my yes has become a thank you.

The gift is still under my arm but I can release the wrapping.  It may come in a different form and I am ready but the gift is here, with me now, always, in this very moment and this one and this one and this one.....

Namaste

The hospital, the staff, Dr. Norbert Liebsch are all amazing.  The hospital is state of the art.  Dr. Liebsch is one of the top oncologists for chondrosarcoma in the world.  Mass General is one of a very few hospitals that offer Proton Beam radiation.  They have an amazing cancer treatment center, very inviting, friendly, warm, supportive staff.  They are cutting edge.  I felt very safe, I trusted every one I met.  It was very peaceful.  They are very helpful.  Chondrosarcoma is very slow growing, rarely, rarely metastasizes, doesn't usually cause other problems unless it grows into areas of the brain or brain stem that can be pressured by the tumor.  My tumor was touching my brain.  95% of his patients don't have surgery to remove the tumor, the radiation controls the growth.  It works.  It is very effective.  Talk to him before you get surgery, before you grow your fear.  My surgery was so thorough that Dr. Daniel Prevedello at UPMC removed 100% of the tumor.  Dr. Liebsch couldn't see any evidence of the tumor and thought that the surgery was well done, amazing.  I was blessed, I was lucky, I am deeply grateful.  I won't set my gift down, or store it under the bed in a pretty box, or tuck into the pages of my favorite book.  I will carry my gift always and I still say yes, I have let go of the grip and I feel free.  I dance with my fingertips grazing the veil of the night sky and I am not afraid, for the first time in my life.  This year, which started for me in July, seemed to be about endings, illness, but has been instead about beginnings, life, beauty and love, deep love, even before this Monday at Mass General with wonderful Dr. Norbert Liebsch.

A little old and a little new...

I took the dimensions of the nature bag I made for my son and made a smaller version of it for myself.  I love the pocket under the flap, I just used odd shaped pieces of fabric.  The flap is a little longer but when I fill it with books, my shopping list, my watercolor pad and water colors plus my wallet it takes up the slack.  I designed this bag a few years ago but made it 14" x 15" this bag is 12" x 12".  Smaller and lighter, I am an over-packer, my shoulder is grateful!

A little old, a little new, a little Amy and little Kaffe....

Inside and out!

I love fat quaters....happy spring.

The greatness in me is you.....

Have you ever really wondered what it will be like?  The light, the great light?  The dance is over, the music is a quiet symphony playing as you file out.  Quiet, hot with sweat from the dance, you smile into the dark, the wind twirls your hair, you eyes look up into the night sky and see the stars.  You reach up, mountain pose, high up, touching the very tip, reaching the veil, grazing fingertips across the edges.  Warm air around, toes barely touching the ground, light as a feather. Deep sigh, one look back and up, up, up, up, it is all so beautiful, smiling faces.

While I still dance here in my living room, poetry, rhythm, pulsing beat, beautiful moments, warm, deep, red wine, May evening, sky clear, moon just crescent smile, I dance this dance, moving, sweating, smiling, breathing, dress clinging, shimmering, toes peeking out, arms out stretched, singing the words, loving the dance.  

I am going to be great for me!  This is great for me.  I want to be great for you too.  I whisper your name, I look deeply into your eyes, searching for the white of your teeth just beneath the surface of your smile.  Kiss your life, the essence of all that you are, so full, so alive, good and bad, joy and terror, morning and evening....I wrap my arms around your love, breathe you in deeply and jump......

A single drop of blood

I cry as I write this, listening to Loreena McKennitt and watching my son play with his dinosaurs in a giant pile of clean, beautiful soil that will be our garden.  It is funny, now that I know I have cancer everything feels so much more precious to me, even a single drop of blood.  I don't dwell too much on my new state of health, or lack of it, but it does cross my mind in a melancholy sort of way.  

There have been many times in my life when I sat quietly and stared into the reality of my own death.  But I have this name now and I can feel my death walk with me, beside me, in a tangible, peaceful way.  It is all unknown, every day, I know that.  But one of my possible moments is now named and that is o.k., it's all precious, every drop.  I won't waste a moment of it.

Today, washing old flower pots I cut my finger.  It was a quick, sharp, deep, tiny cut but it bled. A single, large drop of my blood fell.  That is me, that is my life, I thought.  I have this big fear, an even bigger sadness, but wrapped around all of that I have this deep sense of magic.  The beautiful gift of life, the sacredness of death, there is a beauty in it.  We all have to pass that way, I am just so conscious of it now.  I will, hopefully, have many more years of this Good Life but for now, processing this new state, I am somehow able to embrace my death.  I love life, I love my home, my family, my friends, my chores, me.

My husband returned from his trip yesterday.  He was happy to see me, I was deeply grateful for him too.  Every time he hugs me now I cry.  A deep, childlike, choking sob...of happiness, of love, of sadness, of fear, of gratefulness...like a long, slow goodbye.