Accessible Gardening: #20 Practical Matters for Physically Challenged Gardeners, 4 by Agavegirl1

Agavegirl1 wrote:
Good Morning Gang :D

Jim,
Pears are lovely. :D DH loves them. I just love the smell of them or if they're baked/cooked down. Never appreciated them in the raw. Something about the grittiness in the skin bothers me. My "hyper" taste Epilepsy thing. But then again I could sit there and sniff them all day. Again the hyper sensitive smell Epilepsy thing. I could try to bake you all a loely pear tart IF I can keep track of the amount of flour I put in it. (grimace..eye roll). Speaking of desserts the cake has met it's demise. It has outlived it's usefulness and has been claimed by the garbage can.
Good for your tyrants. You shouldn't be moving or lifting diddlly squat. What was that about youth being wasted on the young? I presume you're old enough to know better and know you shouldn't be lifting or moving things right now.
As for mattresses I'd just be happy with a new one. My pouf is becoming my nest. Ever see a thing called a Love Sac?
Huge oversized nest like pouf things one can sit on/curl up in. I fell in love with them when we were shopping one day. I actually got one in a nice black microfiber. Mine is supposed to fit two people. NOPE...IT'S ALL MINE!!! I snarl at him when he gets near it! He's got the couch and ottoman. Zoe tried to get in it one time. She got snarled at too. Never went near it again and is content with HER pillows. I don't sleep on her pillows. I don't want 70 pounds of dog on mine!
It practically engulfs me and I can curl up in it like a perfect little nest. I usually do and fall asleep. Half the time my DH pulls me out of it and makes me go to bed. I think I'm going to start requesting he leave me in it. They actually make these things big enough to fit 3 and 4 people. I keep telling him we should replace the couch with one.
I call it the pouf monster. It claims victims. So far every person that has come over and sat/sank into that thing has fallen asleep. We take pictures of the pouf monster's victims before we wake them up. :D
Don't know much about honeybees or bees in general just know that we need them and they're in short supply right now. Anything that encourages their presence is great. Out here they seem to like Texas Sage bushes. Really pretty green bush with small oval leaves that are soft and really pretty small purple flowers. They adore the Mexican Bird of Paradise out here. They were always buzzing around when I watered mine at the last place. I'm sure they like some of the cacti flowers although I haven't seen a lot of them. Maybe because I don't have time to actively look for them. I know the birds love the prickly pear fruit. Make a mess of it drilling holes into it and picking at them. We do get tons of humming birds. I presuming anything a hummingbird likes bees would too? I love Narcissus, Paper Whites, Tulips, Daffodils, Lilies of any sort. Your typical Spring flowers. Used to get all excited to see Crocus. It meant Spring was here. Living in Ohio and Pittsburgh, PA really made me appreciate that fact.
Okinawa sounds like it would have been a wonderful place to visit. I think (don't quote me) it was Edo before. Edo Japan is perhaps my favorite period as far as art, culture, and aesthetics in Japan. The Japanese gardens remind me so much of it. How great you had the time to spend there. I hope you enjoyed a lot of it.
That is fascinating about Bamboo. I guess because it grows and spreads so prolifically it only makes sense. Otherwise it would run rampant and be uncontrollable and probably overcome almost any plant next to it. It is a mystery to me why Agaves die after flowering. They still look perfectly fine. They do produce an over abundance of young but considering the ratio of what lives versus dies and how long it takes for them to grow it is strange. Some grow outrageously fast and the other half if I didn't know better I'd swear they were plastic they grow so slow.
Hospitals and hospital food. YUCK. I think registered dietician is another way of saying inability to cook. When I was in the burn center for 2 days I couldn't eat the garbage. First day I didn't eat because I was stoned (morphine drip...self administering...best vacation I took in years!) and had to have surgery in the morning. When I got out of surgery I was starving. Ravenous. I took one bite off the tray and just went YUCK! My husband went to Taco Bell and Starbuck's for me. He was surprised I actually ate that, didn't get sick and asked for more. He brought me back a blueberry muffin from the cafeteria and a coke. :D Ate that too.
Felt much better. Guess I had the munchies (LOL..or should I say perma-grin). Nurses flipped out. I told them shut up or I was checking out and when I did my patient questionnaire I was going to say they wouldn't let me eat when I was hungry. Next day was McDonald's before I left in the hospital in the late afternoon.
Yep faces. I'm the face maker, and caster of sarcastic comments and arm waver. Dave is the finger tapper, twitcher, pacer and silent type with no facial expression. Like I said as long as my mouth is going it is all good. When I get real quiet or monosyllabic uhm...it isn't.
Yeah doing illegal things aren't so good when you get caught. I think everyone needs to spend 1 day in prison doing the job just to see what it really is. The T.V. shows, movies, and "Orange is the New Black" are so way off base and unrealistic it is laughable. Embarrassing in its portrayal really.
It wasn't a hard job. I describe it as a babysitting job watching overgrown children with temper and impulse control problems. It was my job to make sure they didn't give way to them while I was there, get them to and from where they needed to be at designated times, locking them down and counting them 2 xs in my 8 hour shift, searching 2 cells per day, and then basically ignoring them while going about my business and they went about theirs.
Parts of it weren't always pleasant. It's prison! For the most it wasn't bad 90% of the time and it was routine. You knew what your job and expectations were everyday. They rarely changed. You knew how to perform them quickly and efficiently and at what time it had to be done. You knew who and what you were dealing with in terms of inmate mentality (although you NEVER asked what they were in for). You knew who and what you were dealing with in terms of staff (some worse mentality and bigger PITA than the inmates).
They are people. You addressed them as "Mr. Whoever" when you spoke to them. You said "Would you, could you, thank you and please" when you asked them to do something. They did the same back. They called you "Officer, C.O. or Mr/Ms. Your last Name". You could talk about sports, books, weather, the classes they took. Very general things. You told them nothing about you. "Oh, it's got to be hard going home after work and cooking and taking care of kids?" My response, "You don't need to know anything about me personally or my life or what I do outside of here. All you need to know is I'm C.O. Now, is there something you need to ask me or someplace I need to be sending you right now?" Cons are cons. They're like dogs. Always looking, listening, watching and "sniffing".
It was a lot more pleasant than working retail or other jobs even when I was the boss. At least in prison I gave the orders, had control, directed things, and knew things got done "my/the prison's way". I didn't answer to anyone. I didn't have a boss I had to involve or answer to unless I had a reason to involve one or they needed me to do something specifically for them.
Inmates would comply and if not I could issue the discipline papers that would make the consequences unpleasant for them or call a Sergeant, Lieutenant or the Captain on duty (who usually just lived for this stuff) to hose them down with pepper spray or cuff them up and put them in Segregation for running their mouth too much, failing to comply with a reasonable directive or prison rules, or threatening me. They all knew this. (Can't do that in the real world. Darn!)
You also knew better than to go in there and bark at them, be a bully, not be of any use or assistance when they legitimately needed something, and run your mouth to the point of deserving to get beat down by one of them or having them file a grievance. Thus we had and operated with a mutual respect. You did your 8, hit the gate and skate. Not a bad paying gig either. Can't say I made much of a fashion statement in the polyester uniform and combat boots but hey, wasn't there to make a fashion statement or "appeal" to them. Often tried not to. Never had to do great "make up" a lot for this job either. :D
Most of them gave the women very little problems. They usually were more afraid of us then the men for two reasons. They knew we wouldn't put up with them and would all to easily slap paper on them than deal with their crap. (This adds time to their sentence). Also they knew the first time they got mouthy, non-compliant or threatening we had no problem calling down one of the Captains to hose them down with pepper spray. We weren't going to get all macho, puff up and "man up" to them the way the guys would. We'd just laugh and look at them like they were stupid and call the goon squad Captain to do that for us. So all in all the inmates tread a little more carefully and respectfully with us than the male C.O.s
They also like having us around. Unlike the guys they could "talk" to us. We "listen". We didn't judge. We didn't make fun. We didn't "expose" them to others either. There was always that 2% in there with a light bulb on. They got it...a little to late in life unfortunately but they got it. They would sometimes quietly ask advice about how to handle life on the outside relating to family or their kids; going back to where they lived or trying to get into the real world again without getting in trouble.
That always flipped me out. To see some guy who weighed 220, prison muscles and gang tattoos, ask me about how to handle life because he was afraid and didn't know what to do when he got out next month and didn't want to keep making mistakes. They "fixed " their drug problem and they don't want to go back. They asked because I was a "real everyday person" who lives life outside of the place, not some b.s. prison counselor who gave them a book to read.
They got "upset/worried" if you weren't there one week or had a different job or out sick. They actually depended on your specific female presence and guidance at times that much. They didn't react to the male officers that way. My theory is that's why the prisons started hiring women. I think they discovered we could reach them and settle them down and get them to comply for the most part more effectively then the men could!
Like I said, they are people. There are a very few that have a light on. I guess I went to "work" for these ones and went into robot mode for the rest. It is interesting though to think about how a few of the stupid things we did in life and people we shouldn't have been around could have quickly altered our lives and not for the better! Thank God we have light bulbs that work!

Pics #1,2 &4 My neighbor's huge prickly pear. It is probably about 20 years old.. It is growing new pads. I just thought they were pretty. The paddles are smooth ad so is the fruit. The fruit is a yellow-yellow orange and turns orange when ripe. It is oval shaped rather than round and about 1/2 the size of the fruit of the p.pear I showed before.

Pic #3 My Agave Crème Brule. Was all but dead earlier this Summer; Completely fried up and sizzled leaves that looked like bacon.

Pic #4 My "Trixy" actually it is some kind of Trichocereus. Don't know there's about 300 of them. Cute little guy. He was pretty fried too and his arms were all flat. Now they're perky and nice and green!

Peace; Out
AG/TTC