I just read my last post and so much for writing in the blog every day as planned way back in May. That was 6 months ago! I'm doing very well emotionally and physically. Even throughout this Covid-19 pandemic, I'm enjoying life! As was mentioned in my last post, I added 2 raised beds to my gardens this year. I planted 24 tomato seedlings that I started last March as well as some scraggly lettuce seedlings that I also started in March. The garden with the tomatoes and lettuce also had some basil seedlings planted between the tomato plants. My children were home at the time of my planting and laughed as these little tiny shoots looked sickly and ridiculous in the one raised bed. Some of the tomato seedlings went into my main garden that is not raised. That garden was filled with green bean seeds and it holds my rhubarb. In my second raised bed, I planted sunflower seeds, parsnip seeds and kohlrabi seeds. As always, I have my herb bed which produced my parsely, green onions, sage, chives and asparagus. I also planted zucchini in an existing bed as I like to make and can my zucchini relish for use over the winter.
I love watching the seeds sprout and the seedlings grow. The sickly looking seedlings took root and thrived! The rhubarb is a perennial plant and always thrives. This year, I used it to make rhubarb marmalade, rhubarb crisp and rhubarb pie. I also picked it regularly and put measured cut rhubarb in packages that went in the freezer so I can use it in the winter. It freezes well with minimal work. I use some of my rhubarb marmalade to marinate meats and to make vinaigrette for my salads. As the seeds grew into lush green plants, I had to chase off the rabbits who wanted to eat the tender young shoots and leaves of my green beans. The green beans were harvested first. What a successful crop! They filled half my freezer. I froze them as cut green beans but also as whole green beans and even "french cut" green beans. The zucchini sprouted and grew with the regular, loving tending that I showered them with. They developed their blossoms and flowers and I watched eagerly for the fruit to develop. Unfortunately, the squash beetles found my zucchini plants and they did not produce any fruit. Once I saw the stems of the plants turning mushy, I pulled them and removed all the roots from my garden bed. I usually compost but I did not want the beetle eggs or larvae to be in my yard. Everything associated with the zucchini went to the city's composting site. I was disappointed but oh well, life goes on. The tomatoes started to come along and ripen at the same time as the kohlrabi ripened. Most of the kohlrabi, we ate fresh but I did get a couple of packages frozen for use in the winter. Oh the tomatoes!!!
My tomatoes were huge this year! What a success! I started harvesting them in August and I still have green tomatoes ripening on my counter in paper bags. As they ripen, I've made more tomato salsa and tomato juice. My tomatoes this year supplied me with 11 litres of tomato sauce, 5 litres of meat sauce, 11 litres of tomato juice, 4 litres of tomato salsa and numerous tomatoes for tomato sandwiches. Hubby was concerned that I would have too many tomatoes and he would get sick of them. I love tomatoes. When I have poached egg on toast with cheese, I will slice up a tomato and eat all the slices on the side. I love tomato sandwiches with thick slices of tomatoes and lots of mayonnaise with a bit of salt and pepper. I see my tomatoes coming to an end now and I will miss them. I will probably make one more batch of tomato juice (4 to 5 litres) and enjoy the last sandwiches. Hubby may be sick of seeing tomatoes but I am not! What a successful year!
My sunflower seeds sprouted and grew. They grew and grew. I felt like I was in the fable "Jack and the Beanstalk"! The sunflowers grew 6 to 8 feet high. I wanted to harvest the seeds and keep some for planting next year, some for bird seed and some for making salted sunflowers for snacks. I managed to get some but the squirrels, birds and a mite with its larvae destroyed some of the seed heads before they ripened fully. The seeds I did manage to save, I picked early so they were not fully grown seeds. I'll try again next year with the seeds that I did save for planting.
My parsnips are somewhat successful. I will plant them again next year but not near the sunflower seeds. The sunflowers blocked the sun and the parsnips then didn't grow quite as big as I expected. I've harvested some of them and they are nice and tender with a lovely taste. There are still some in the bed that I will be picking before November 10. Our weather has warmed up and so I'm letting the parsnips get a little extra growing time.
With all the gardening, I have kept myself strong and somewhat fit. I'm feeling healthy with lots of energy. In an attempt to regain some of the muscle that I've lost in the last 3 years, Hubby and I are starting to work out just to tone ourselves up. Can you believe it has been 3 years since my stem cell transplant?!! I celebrated my third birthday on October 30. Hubby and I have a small social bubble of friends who we know are self-isolating and safe for us to be around. We celebrated my third birthday with 2 other couples by bringing shawarma to one couple's home. My friend whose home we were at brought out a platter of goodies from a local bakery. What a lovely time we had! The night after, on Halloween Night, we hosted another couple that is in our bubble for our annual Halloween Dinner. This year it was a mean jack o'lantern cheese ball (Hubby thought it looked like "Ed The Sock"), personal creepy pizzas with "bloody" meatball rats nibbling on the edge of the pizza. My friend supplied really tasty individual cherry cheese cakes with a chocolate brownie inside.
Throughout the pandemic, I have continued to knit the therapeutic hand muffs of various themes. I think I have knit about 15 of them although 3 were custom hand muffs for specific people. These are all donated. People have been donating some of their leftover yarn stashes to me to help with the knitting. I'm currently taking a break from knitting the hand muffs and I'm knitting 2 pairs of mittens and a hat for the needy. A local lady is collecting items for her Giving Tree which she will give out.
The pandemic has curtailed some of our activities. Hubby and I do not go out to eat but we still support our favourite independent and local restaurants by ordering take out. We have gone on short trips with The Big Wing but we didn't stop at The Cove Inn this year for lunch. In July, Hubby planned a weekend away to Kemptville, ON. We stayed at a newly renovated hotel in an old building. It was a very hot and humid weekend but we walked throughout the village and picked up some geocaches along the way. This was when I first realized that I am still not as strong as I was in 2016. I'm still a work in progress and I'm very happy with where I'm at physically. We enjoyed our weekend away. Again, due to Covid-19, we did not go on holiday on The Big Wing for weeks. So our first weekend away was in July. In August, we went to Buckhorn Lake for a weekend to celebrate our anniversary. We packed up The Big Wing (our Honda Goldwing motorcycle) and headed out. It was a lovely little retreat and inn. The food was excellent, the accommodations were absolutely wonderful. We were in the Chalet which was a short walk from the main lodge. The Chalet consisted of 6 units. Our unit had a balcony facing the lake. I'm a morning person and so I would get up, carry my cup of coffee and my book to the balcony and sit in the comfortable Muskoka Chairs to read. I would also listen to the water lapping on the rocky shore as the birds twittered and flitted among the trees. The one morning, I was reading and I looked up just to enjoy the view and there was a man going by in a pedal canoe holding his fishing rod. Not a sound was made by him! What a lovely invention!! I was intrigued and watched this man go silently along the shoreline while he fished. He obviously knew the area as he would angle out into the lake to avoid the rocks that lurked just under the water. This area had shores that looked like big boulders just tumbled down and landed at the edge of the water but also underneath the water. It was rugged but beautiful.
After we enjoyed our idyllic weekend which included walking through the forest and visiting beaver ponds, we hopped back on The Big Wing and continued on to Parry Sound to meet up with our son and his girlfriend. We rented a cottage together and had a blast! This was in mid-August and there was a meteor shower taking place that week. We spent each clear night gazing up at the natural light show that took place. The stars were so clear and bright! We leaned back in our chairs and just watched the stars. Then "There's one!" and "Oh! There's another one!" came whispering from one or another of us. Sometimes a groan as one of us, it seemed like mostly me, missed the star shooting across the sky. Sometimes the star had a sparkly tail as it shot across the sky in the pitch black. Other times, the star was just a quick, short burst of light with a small streak across the sparkly sky. Our time with our son included swimming, walking and visiting a local craft brewery called The Trestle Brewing Company. We enjoyed our lunch on a very social distanced patio. This place did it right! I felt safe and separated! Too soon, our few days away with our son was over and we packed up The Big Wing, climbed on and hit the road to head home.
I had my 6 month check up by phone with my oncologist/hematologist. In preparation for that, I had blood work done the day before. He informed me that my blood levels are back where they were in 2016. No wonder I've been feeling so strong and healthy! So I asked him if I was no longer considered high risk especially during this pandemic. He burst my bubble. Because of my 2 bouts with lymphoma which included 2 rounds of chemotherapy and also because of my stem cell transplant, I will always be high risk. The only people more high risk are those people who are currently going through chemotherapy. This news did not knock me down. I thought about it and decided that while I'm feeling strong, healthy and am currently in remission, I am going to continue to live life fully. I'm going to work out and get my muscles more toned and stronger. I'm partially doing this because of vanity but also I figure it will make me stronger to face the next bout of lymphoma whenever that is. I'm healthy now and that's what I'll focus on.
Hubby has been fortunate to work throughout the pandemic shut down and restrictions. It seems to have been a little more stressful. In October, he announced we were going to another cottage for a few days just after Thanksgiving. We did not go on The Big Wing this time. That was a good thing! The lane way down into the cottage would have been a challenge. It was a steep (over boulders), winding (hairpin, hair raising turns for me) lane. This cottage was just west of Algonquin Park. The colours on the trees were just starting to fade but the they were still brilliant golds especially across the lake when the sun hit the trees at sunset. The cottage was nestled on top of the huge boulders that were obviously underneath the ground. At the shoreline, the boulders created a very rugged terrain which the cottage owners tamed with wooden decks, stairs and the wooden dock. October was a beautiful time to be there. There were no black flies or mosquitoes and the scenery was breath-taking. Our bed had a glass wall and sliding doors out onto the deck. This allowed us an expansive view of the lake, autumnal tree and breathtaking sky from our bed. The first night, I awoke just before 5 a.m. The stars as viewed from my cocoon in my bed were brilliant beacons of light against the midnight black of the sky. The stars were little crystals just hanging in the sky. I woke Hubby up so he could see the magnificence of the night sky. As we settled back down into our bed, I turned on my left side and could still see some stars through a little window in the left wall. Just as I was ready to drift off, I saw...a shooting star streak across the sky above the trees! I'm sure I fell asleep with a peaceful smile on my face.
At that cottage, the owner had built a screened-in sun porch. As I looked at it, I'm sure it is so they can sit out and not be devoured by the black flies and mosquitoes. The owner had obviously started to winterize and get ready to close up the cottage. There was plastic on the outside of the screens which kept the wind and rain out but it was still unheated and the week was a cool, damp one. However, I had brought along some cozy afghans from home and I bundled myself up in layers of clothing with my favourite afghan as well. I found my happy place! It was a hanging bamboo chair with pillows. The chair could swing, it could turn so I could see the water or turn so I could see the forest. I made a little nest for myself and ensconced my body into the chair. I spent many hours there with my coffee, tea, wine and books. Sometimes it was nice just to sit and watch the remaining birds and animals scamper through the trees. It was absolutely peaceful and quiet. The silence would only be broken by the wind in the leaves or the call of the local loon. Our time was so relaxed. Hubby and I deliberately unhooked from the technological world. No cell phone, no social media, no television and no radio. We made an exception for some of Hubby's favourite East Coast music which we had on CD.
So here we are back home. It's November. This week, we're getting a last blast of warm temperatures before winter sets in. I'm feeling great. It has been satisfying to hang my laundry on the line and watch the wind whip it around to dry it. The leaves continue to fall from the trees and are now brown and dead. I'm mulching them with our lawnmower and piling them on the raised beds and my other gardens as it is now time to put them to sleep for the winter. Next up on my list of things to keep me satisfied is the Christmas Baking. I'm not sure whether my adult children will make it home this year, but if not, then I will have baking done that I can package up and send to them. Last year at this time, I discovered the Hallmark Christmas Movies. So on the movie goes while I wait for the batches of baking to come out of the oven. It is so cozy and comforting to sit and knit, sip my tea, watch the Christmas movies and smell the delicious aroma of my Christmas baking. There's always something to enjoy while I self-isolate.
Life is great!!
