Isn’t winter supposed to be the time to get the flu?? (Inquiring Robbyns want to know…)
I’ve had it now for three weeks, and counting. I don’t make a graceful invalid. This I know. I’ve also been trying not to miss any work, either, so that’s made things interesting around here.
Jack’s very busy with work, though he’s helped me so thoughtfully in so many ways. (many!) But I don’t have any recent batches of homemade soup left in the freezer, and I don’t feel good enough to undertake the soupmaking process from frozen turkey to the finished product. We do so much with the turkey, we use everything but the gobble, but feeling like I have a concrete block for a head makes me stare at the freezer contents a long moment, pour some hot tea, and refrain from filling the fridge with what may remain in there wayyyy too long between eatings and end up as so much Refrigerator Roadkill…if you know what I mean.
(I’m aware I just perpetrated a whopper of a run-on sentence.)
Summer is just in the middle of what was to be my gardening glory…sunburns, harvests, weedpulling, nurturing the many little new things and keeping the old ones watered and surviving. I guess assessing things now at Week Three has brought on this State of the Garden address. Oh, I’m getting better slowly, but the final stages of my ague have rendered my right ear what I imagine it would feel like to have Tiger Woods lodge a championship golfball at close swinging range squarely into my ear canal, full force.
My amazing golfball ear and I, a bit sullenly, are looking out the window at what was only recently my garden. It’s almost night, and my sun-faded hoe is still propped against the same bit of wall and leaf-littered tile on the back lanai. Behind it, a thick impervious wall of green (that used to be My Garden) darkens until the coming of night is fully ripe and all the edges blur into deep umbers. Another day has passed, and I am more distanced from the object of my dreams, patience, and expectations. We’ve been absent too long from each other, and Jack’s and my collection of carefully nurtured plants have either beaten a hasty retreat or gone riotously feral.
(Where has Jack been? Working like a champ, and me not able to take up the slack)
This jungle of celullose, filament, and fiber has conspired to bury all my unnaturally-straight lines and methods of containment beneath a verdant lava flow of rampant Bermuda grass and other weeds I can’t yet identify but am sure probably contain cures for all modern plagues and for Tiger Woods-impacted ears like mine.
(My ability for run-on sentences, however, seems to remain unimpaired…)
Evidence of my former attempts at civilized order of vegetable, vine, herb and flower awaits discovery. When I’m fever-free I will have to quickly begin the re-excavation of my Backyard Krakatoa. In the meantime, the object of my affection (the garden) seems to be enjoying itself a little too much…like a good joke shared between friends except one of them laughs a little too long and a little too hard.
Yes, garden, get your yucks now. The hoe and I will have a big reunion soon…and if you get too jiggy, Jack just might endeavor to call you A Cover Crop, mow you under and start from scratch again!
I’ll get better, regroup, and get out there for another suspense-riddled episode of Survivor, as I see what plants made it and which didn’t.
In the meantime, I’m preoccupied being a bad patient. I’ve been sleeping about as much as groaning… a lot.
We do a lot of prevention when it comes to health around here. I’d give us high marks for improvement compared to not so long ago. Still, this is a reminder that the unexpected needs to be figured into our real plans, and contingencies put in place as much as possible for the most vital elements of our homestead…now and in the future. This not only applies to health and sickness, but to aging, injuries, job changes, transportation changes…so many areas. Right now, we have a little more leeway in experimentation and letting some things slide…as in the garden just now. But ultimately, we’ll be exponentially far more invested in depending on that very garden for most of the food we eat, and it’ll be crucial.
Into the conversation go all these things.
I’m interested in knowing how experienced farmers/homesteaders deal with illness and injury, things such as those that are unexpected, and still keep the place running smoothly…or at all. I’d love to hear advice from anyone who’s been in that position!
In the meantime, I’ll deal with the remains of this flu and tend to the golf ball. Never been my favorite sport, anyway. 
I’m sorry to hear you are sick – I’m a bad patient too, and can rarely take time off from work for it, so I hear your frustrations. The unexpected can be a shock when it hits like that, and really make one realize how much its necessary to have plans for that.
I’m not a farmer or homesteader, or even an experienced person in just basic homemaking, but one thing that helps me is to think of alternate resources – if one thing goes bad, there is a fall-back to provide for financial or physical needs. Not easy, I know. The other is to hoard. Not in a bad way, but in times when things are going well, to live just as simply or to my actual needs, rather than go to the full possibilities of the bountiful time. Kind of as if that extra wasn’t there to use at all – it goes directly into the reserves right away so that I don’t miss it, and have it when times get tougher.
Goodness! Three weeks. Persistent little bug, isn’t it? Hope you are feeling tip-top very soon. Beautifully written post, as always.
Cassandra
So sorry to hear you have been under the weather. I hope you are soon up and about with full energy. I’m not sure that I count as an experienced farmer/homesteader but I’ve been a working mom/homemaker/gardener for many years. The only advice I can give is that you do the best you can and then play catch up as you are able. Sometimes you can get things under control- sometimes not. That’s just the way it works. I wish I had a magic answer for you.