Yes, I’m still here. Yes, I still plan to write and share but the last 4 weeks have been the most painful days of my life and blogging hasn’t been at the top of my list of things to do.

Several days after my last post, I contracted a particularly nasty case of shingles, leaving me in severe pain and unable to walk for several days.

Thanks goodness for antivirals like acyclovir.

The healing process has been even more difficult as I’ve suffered intense bouts of muscle pain and severe allodynia to the degree that anything touching me, including clothes, water, or even a light breeze from a fan felt like razors cutting my flesh from the inside out. My only peace has come in the form of ice, capsaicin cream, and a powerful combination of Pregabalin and Oxycodone.

I’ll spare you the remaining details (and disgusting photos) but will say that shingles aren’t something to fuck around with.

There is a vaccine available for it and if you’re over 60 (or have a compromised immune system like me), talk to your doctor about getting vaccinated because you don’t want to go through what I’ve been though.

[Thank you Anitra…for finding a a deep well of strength within you to keep the family strong and me in as much comfort as possible]

So yeah. That’s why I haven’t written for the last month. All the while though, the garden has continued to flourish.

Manchester United FTW!!

At this time last year, I was in the hospital—too weak to walk, frightened, and very, very sick. While I took comfort in having my family near me during my 2 week stay, it was frightening to know that a team of infectious disease specialists were making little progress towards understanding what they were dealing with. I didn’t know why I was there or when I could go back to the peace of my own home.

Instead of watching the corn emerge, listening to the cardinals sing, and enjoying the blooms of my irises, I was stuck in a hospital room with views like this of my family:

During my stay, Anitra would bring photos of the garden to me and while they gave me something to look forward to, it wasn’t the same as being there.

I spent this morning fertilizing my garlic with kelp for the last time this year. Bulbing will begin soon so I don’t want to provide the plants with any extra nitrogen for green growth. Before the rain set in this afternoon, I managed to get all the beds weeded and plant watermelon, beans, and sunflowers.

This year, I’m especially thankful for the opportunity to see it all come to life in person.

Photos from today: corn, garlic, dill, spinach, lettuce & carrots

Yesterday morning found me in the garden, in the rain, sowing a small plot of 70+ pinto beans. I also took time to harvest a few radishes which were sweet and crisp!

This coming weekend is my biggest weekend of spring though. For 2 days, I’ll be digging, weeding, and planting. Most of my summer vegetables will go in, including corn, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, and several varieties of bush beans.

I also have 2 more 4x8 beds to prepare and plant, thanks to the generosity of my neighbor. She recently offered use of her backyard (which is bigger and sunnier than mine) for expanded garden space in exchange for a few peppers later in the year and some brush clearing. Not a bad deal!

My cool-loving, darling crops (lettuce, cauliflower, radish, carrots, spinach, and cilantro), planted weeks ago, are up and thriving but beginning to crowd one another.

That’s brings about my most hated day in the garden—thinning day.

It’s not that I mind the work. It’s a very focused, relaxing activity for me. What I don’t enjoy is plucking healthy seedlings that I’ve nursed for weeks.

Sometimes I find myself rationalizing a decision to not thin.

“Who cares if those are too close. I don’t mind eating twisted and warped carrots.”

In the end though, the weaker one always gets plucked.

To thin, you have to focus on the future. You have to ask, “what is this carrot’s potential?” and “how can I help it get there?”

And so a few weaker plants are sacrificed for the stronger ones. Both go on to serve me—some as food, the others recycled into compost (but only after nibbling a leaf or two for a taste of what’s to come).

Other activities yesterday included:

• Checking on the spears of asparagus poking up
• Preparing Bed #3 where my corn will go in later this month
• Planting 2 small rows of beets
• Weeding the garlic
• Trimming the clover around the raised beds
• Turning the compost pile
• Weeding the spinach
• Fixing the wire on the trellis for our cucumbers
• Transplanting more Italian flat-leaf parsley
• and even more weeding around the lettuce, carrots, and lettuce

All of that was topped off with a rest in the hammock, which made the day about as good as it gets.

I pulled a radish seedling this morning. It was planted on Mar 20th—twelve days ago. All these years of gardening and I’m still amazed by a seed’s exponential growth.

The tap root is well formed and the colour is developing nicely.

While looking through a co-worker’s files this morning for a project update, I found this:

Yes. Yes they do. And now that we’re getting the right people on the bus, maybe we won’t have to rely on the wrong people as often as we did in the past. (Hats off to new hires David Park and Denise Sarkees.)

In other news, MEG is up 4.5% today on the stock market. Yay!