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Accessible Gardening: #20 Practical Matters for Physically Challenged Gardeners, 1 by seacanepain

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seacanepain wrote:
Beth, I couldn’t agree more about wearing med devices and this heat. The back brace is miserable and the leads for the bone stimulator turn to goo. I can’t believe some women wear stockings in summer. I will not name names.
Kay loves those leg sleeves and told visitors after her last surgery not to mention to the nurses that she got out of bed. That way she got to keep the unit longer. Yes, I forgot the nurses do take it away as soon as a patient is mobile.
Oh, good grief, don’t get me started on women and hair color. Kay’s hair has been every color in the human rainbow of hair colors. She hates her natural color because it is an in-between, non-descript color. I always liked the way it looks different colors in different light. I even like the silver strands that have shown up the last few years, but Kay disappeared those as soon as she realized they were there.
Kay’s platinum blond father referred to her as the one with the dirty blond colored hair. (Kay was one of his six daughters.) I think that gave her some sort of complex about her hair color even though it was his poor English vocabulary and wasn’t meant to be cruel.
My granddaughter is a stunningly beautiful girl with a thick mane of pale blond hair and eyes a beautiful shade of light blue. Considering how many women try to dye their hair that color, you think the girl would be thrilled to have it naturally. Absolutely not! She says because she is a beautiful blond, no one takes her seriously. She is mathematically gifted and a year away from a degree in engineering.. but feels like she is always battling the dumb, blond, sex kitten stereotype. It was always punked up some weird color not in the human rainbow of hair colors when she was younger. Anything cute was an absolute no-no. Now she is nearing her college graduation and thinking about impressing potential employers so what does she do? Dyes it the natural shade of her grandmother’s and mother’s hair, that indistinct honey color between blond and brown. It’s crazy what women do to their hair!
I don’t have gray in my hair yet, but I do in my beard. My elder brothers both went bald early. I am just happy to still have hair.
Carrie, the rose in my last post is a floribunda called ‘Easy Does it’ and those in my initial post are a no-name grandiflora and a hybrid tea called ‘Bridadoon’. They are all fragrant. The green leafy plant in my initial post, photo 4, is a favorite among the V.I.P.s (visually impaired persons). It’s Stachys byzantina or lamb’s ears. You don’t have to be a V.I.P. to appreciate it. Man, those leaves are like velvet! The ‘Big Ears’ cultivar has made lamb’s ears possible in the deep south. It’s rated to USDA Zone 9 and is do-able in this humidity if the gardener is careful about no overhead watering. Did you catch that IO1? There is now a lamb’s ear you can grow in south Georgia
I also should have explained the planter photo for any newcomers. This area calls itself “The Peanut Capitol of the World”. I’m sure you remember that from the boll weevil monument article you wrote, Carrie, but I wanted everyone in on the joke. Most of the businesses and organizations in this area have their peanut figurines.
I came across an interesting tidbit while reading about Opunctia. We may have the only statue dedicated to a bug, but in Australia there is a building named in honor of the bug they brought in to control Opunctia stricta. O. stricta was to Australia what kudzu was to the southeast U.S. It took over farms there like kudzu did here. I do want a big patch of prickly pear on a xera-scaped sandy slope, but I think I will forego the O. stricta. The elongated shape of the pads is the only way it varies from O. humifusa, the kind that naturally grows here. Also, the prickles are said to be even more wicked than O. humifusa (Devil’s Tongue). I’ve limited my selection to four prickly pear. The devil’s tongue and a nopals variety with relatively few prickles, Santa Rita for its colorful pads and a 5’ tall trunked variety that is native. The prickly pear and a couple of yucca varieties we already have are the only plants I’m sure about adding to the xera-scaped slope. I would like to keep the vetiver grass there, but I am uncertain whether vetiver grass can survive on its own. I will test a small stand to find out how it does without supplemental watering. I’m reading up on blue stem and gamma grass today. I don’t know if this is how you are supposed to design a garden, by deciding on the plants first. It seems logical. Kay suggested a medicine wheel garden, but I don’t know enough to design one of those. She also pointed me toward an old thread on the xera forum that discusses fragrant plants that are suitable for dry situations. Haven forbid we have a garden without scented plants. J
Kay is moving around potting benches and their contents today, as well as prepping the greenhouse for cool weather. It seems early to me, but the spiders are stringing up webs everywhere they can find vertical supports. This web building frenzy is something I normally associate with October. I wonder if spiders are one of the animals that the weather predicting old-timers watch.
It is hard to walk around outside without running into strands of spider silk. I’m not sure why spiders go nuts with the web building this time of year. I don’t think they stock up food for the winter, but I could be wrong.
I’m putting my foot down this Halloween. We are not going to clean away real spider webs so we can put up phony florescent green cobwebs. Let the spiders do our Halloween decorating. It will be an arachniphobe’s nightmare by Halloween. I’m not bothered by spiders, but even I gulp a little at our resident banana spiders. Those things can get huge and they will challenge you if you approach their web. They bounce their web like it is a trampoline while cracking their mandibles together. I can almost imagine tiny spider voices giving me what for. Nadine told me something interesting today. The intricate, artistic looking webs are probably the work of male spiders. The messier, pragmatic looking ones are the work of lady spiders. Who figures that kind of stuff out anyway? Are there scientist comparing the artistic merits of different spider webs? There are times I wonder if the kid is putting me on and makes this stuff up.
Here’s a sign of fall that is prettier than spiders and their webs. Beautyberry (Callicarpa Americana) produces eye-popping purple berries that grow doughnut-fashion around the stem. There is also a less common variety with white berries.
Catch y’all tomorrow.
(Jim)
Ps. some of the Peanuts in town lol