Laughing For Joy #8

Yes,Sheri, I know the crunch. Send seeds. It will be more affordable. Postage is getting ridiculous.

I was complaining today about having to pay more than double what I’ve been paying for my Cymbalta. I may have to switch to something the VA will cover. My GP put me on Cymbalta because it helps with neuropathy , in addition to being an anti-depressant. I worry that the Brand X anti-depressant the VA will cover won’t have the same effect.

I’ve had to moved my tomato in an eBucket even closer to the house. A deer took a bite out of of an almost ripe tomato. If they rob it where it is now, Fenny and Tater-dog are fired!

The deer haven’t touched my cultivar daylilies even those on the boundry near a deer trail. Those are in flipped tire containers with smelly-leafed yarrow growing around close by. Maybe, they don’t like the ““scent-scape,” as Kay calls it. Or, maybe, they just like tomatoes better. :( They snacked on our orange native daylilies too, Vickie… and ignored a pink very old variety that looks just like the orange natives except for the color. I thought deer couldn’t see orange. That proves it! The does are part of The Pink Conspiracy.

Carrie, there are dwarf crepe myrtles that will grow in containers. I just read a book set in Boston/Cambridge that mentioned crepe myrtle trees as part of the natural setting.. That was a surprise. I didn’t know they would grow in MA. (Jim) _

Jim, RE-VA coverage for meds. They will authorize 'fee basis' payment for 'out of formulary' meds if the brands that the VA carries have proven ineffective for you. If, like me, you have had numerous u unsuccessful or ineffective trials with the cheaper generic brands. Your civilian MD should be able to provide such documentation in the form of a letter to the VA. Cymbalta was authorized for me, but it was bad news--increased suicidal ideation.
You are in my prayers and hopefully this will work out for you.

Sheri/ BB

Prayers going out to Sheri and Jim.Cymbalta is totally out for me I have too many suicidal thoughts anyway.I'm with the very old prozac.

me too, Vicki!

Nadi and I are both on Lexapro which is basically a cheap version of Prozac. I don’t think it is considered generic because it is made by a certain company. I can’t discern a difference between the effects of Lexapro and Prozac so I’m satisfied. The older anti-depressants were horrible. I’ve seen entire books criticizing Prozac. The people who write those obviously don’t remember the older ones. I do think it might be over-prescribed. I mean, come on, Prozac to cure nail biting! That sounds like overkill. ALL drugs have a risk factor. I don’t remember exactly how my mother cured my sister of nail biting, but I am certain no drugs were involved.
I hope you aren’t getting too warm a welcome to Texas, Carrie. It was in the upper 90s here yesterday. Nighttime temps are still down in the 70’s so the garden is still productive. It is down to weeding, watering and harvesting for us. There is still time to plant okra and pink-eyed, purple hulled peas, but the meds I’m on now make me more sensitive to heat. I may just enjoy what I have and wait for late August when it will be time for the fall garden. I’ve become a seed junkie. Let’s see if I can go without propagating anything for 3 months. lol. k*

I'm still in BOSTON! The moving company left all kinds of stuff behind! Yikes.

Oh, Carrie, can you call their office? I am never going to move again. When I die they can put me on the compost heap. hugs, katie

OH YES!! I remember the effects of some of those early anti depressents. The only reason one was'nt depressed was cause one could'nt wake up enough to know if one was depressed or not.Also made me gain lots of weight. And the electro-shock treatments made me forget everything. Still don't know everything that happened during that time. But they were still a releif.I also injoyed making lots of crafts.Also learned to make my own coping mechinisms(SP) Crafting etc.
Kay, I'll be down when the peas are ready. Love those purple hulls.
Ya know? I really miss the canning and freezing i used to do. I have some neighbors that are selling tame blackberrys, am thinking about buying some and making jam. I could probably scrounge around and find something to put up.I bought strawberries earlier but ate them all before i could freeze them.
Katie, I can think of worse places to be buried. Just think of turning into beautiful flowers.
Carrie, Want all of us to come move those movers along?

OK, we did get the "relocation company" to come back and pick up the stuff they forgot, which gave us a chance to add a few more things to the pile. I'd really rather it be up to us, I think, and have it be our responsibility to do it right. This leaving it to someone else just STINKS! I mean, we probably wouldn't have packed as nicely as they did but I wouldn't have left key parts of the bed frame behind, either!

GGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Ok, I feel better now, thanks.

Oh Carrie, Are they going to look for it or replace it?

We bought a piece of wood at Home Depot for $0.51 that works perfectly. My laughing for joy today is I spent the night in my own bed with my own husband and slept better than I have in months!!!!!

Way to go Carrie!!!!!!!

OT (sorry)- I want all of y friends here and on other threads to know just how much I have learned from you and how special each and every one of you are to me.
It is looking grim on me renewing my DG membership in a couple weeks, I have had much increased medical & pharmacy charges, and find myself hanging on a wing and a prayer.
I shall miss you all very much and will continue to lift each of you up in my prayers.

Much love,
Sheri :-(

I had to laugh at Tater-dog yesterday. She loves her squeaky toys and is very possessive of them. She heard the sound of one of her toys being squeaked and got very frustrated trying to locate the toy thief.
This is the first year we have had a brown-headed nuthatch living here. Their chirps sound just like a squeaky toy. Poor Tate isn’t the brightest of dogs. I think she still suspects the birds of stealing one of her squeaky toys and hiding it up in a tree. (Jim)

That is funny, Jim. Thanks for sharing. kb

Good to see this thread pop up!

Oh my...that is too funny!!!

I made a lovely bird bath. True, like most of the things here it was made from junk, but I went to great effort to make it look like a classic piece of garden art. It is marble white with an antique gold rim and has a lovely piece of white quartz sitting in the center for the bird's to alight on.
When Nadi arrived this morning, she told me of a small vatican of cardinals that were playing in the bird bath. I grabbed the camera and shoved it into Jim's hands, imagining the photo that scene would make. The crimson plumage of the bird against the old gold and ivory would be like Nature's version of an old ruby pendant. You've probably notice the absence of a photograph. It turned out the birds were not enjoying my attempt at sophisticated garden art, but were instead frolicking in an old charcoal grill painted bright yellow that I was in the process of turning into a raised bed for the children's garden. I hadn't leveled it or filled it with soil so rain had collected in the downhill side during our recent storms. Cardinals, it seems, like their garden art edgy and avant garde. ;-)

Lovely visual picture, Kay. You can always makes me see things without a picture.

I took a quiz the other day to find my true "learning style." My daughter with ADD is always telling me she's a kinetic learner, and I was wondering why I am so disappointed with all the things I forget to talk about at MD appointments. Yup, I'm a visual learner, meaning I have to see things written down or in a chart or a graph or a list. Which is why I can never remember the instructions for how to adjust the wheelchair after the guy leaves. I touch the parts that adjust certain features, and while he's there, I can work it, but once he leaves, I can never figure it out again. That's not really a laughing for joy, just a baby insight.

You received your new chair?! That's a joyful event.

Yup!

Hi Friends,
Here is a Cattail bird feeder my #2 grandson and I built the other day. I posted it on the Garden Art forum. but I thought I would include it here just to brighten up your day.
Paul.

How very clever he is!!

That sounds like a bird feeder that would give the squirrels no end of trouble. We've given up on the idea of a completely squirrel proof bird feeder and settled for making their thievery as difficult and funny to watch as possible. The pesky little tree rats are always a good source of cheap entertainment.

Hello, I just wish to reintroduce the concept of "laughing for joy." I've been feeling grouchy and small and I know my meds need to get adjusted but in the meantime, I need to remember that there are joys out there.

Today I am happy that my husband, even though he hates coffee, has learned how to make it for me exactly the way I like it. We were away for the weekend, drinking hotel coffee, and today he put an extra spoonful of sugar in my coffee, saying "you always ask for more sugar after drinking bad coffee for a few days, so I put one in ahead of time." Awwww. ^_^

So husbands are practical to have around.





(sorry, just my warped sense of humor)

They certainly are!

Carrie, you lucky lady! All I will say about Jim's coffee is that house plants love it cold. ;-) Nadi brews a good pot, but she loves all the bells and whistles such as flavored creams. I like my coffee basic, especially the first cup of the morning.
Six months of DD#1's chaotic presense, has left Nadi with a strong need for routine and schedules. She has a 4:30 wake up time and breakfast is promptly at 8:00. I can't claim I always make wake up time, but you can bet I'm sitting at the table at eight. It was French toast casserole this morning. Good stuff! It marinates in the cinnamon and other flavorings overnightand that, to me, makes it tastier than actual French toast.

I used to make French toast with the extra texture and fiber bread from the grocery store, it had seeds and grains, then I'd add milk, eggs, vanilla and nutmeg (in addition to cinnamon). I like it very moist--wet--and if there is leftover egg-glopp I'll eat it straight cooked like a scrambled egg.

(Jim) I know DG would prefer the different individuals at Amargia have their own accounts, but I am still running into problems on that front. Google Chrome says I should be able to. Still working on it.
I have wanted to bump up this thread again with some cool photos. The problem is there is nothing COOL to be found outside. Man, is it hot! All the plants look droopy and exhausted. I miss the shady tropicals. (They didn’t fit in with the new low maintenance thing we’re doing and there will not be much shade until the deciduous trees take over the shading job from the pines we removed.) The crinums, zinnias and marigolds are a nice splash of color in the beds and borders. They will be more photogenic when sauna summer gives way to dry roast summer. They look a little like tired soldiers in no longer quite so crisp dress uniforms in this humidity. I can relate to that. . The wild daylilies and some of the closest cultivated kin still pop up with a defiant blast of orange. (The most heat tolerant all seem to be orange.) I could really use some chilly blue to visually cool things off. Wondering if the agapanthus Kay tried to talk me into buying would be in bloom now.
It has been a great Father’s Day. The crew really gave me what I wanted this year and that is to lay in bed all day and watch old Adam12 episodes. Understanding finally dawned that taking me out to a restaurant was not my idea of a good time. A waitress told me once that seats in restaurants were purposely a little uncomfortable to keep table traffic moving. The problem there is “not too comfortable” to someone with a healthy back means something closer to agony for someone with advanced degenerative disk disease. The manual w/c or Quantum is more comfortable, but I would still have to spend time taking them out and setting up in the oppressive heat of an asphalt parking lot. Teriyaki chicken, stir-fried vegetables and jasmine rice taste best to me when I can eat them sitting up in my own bed and I don’t know of any restaurant where I could have followed up that meal with German chocolate cake. Yes!!! This was my kind of Father’s Day.
BTW, Carrie, Kay came through the heart test with a bad bruise, but she is fine otherwise. Plumbing looked great. Problem must be totally in the heart’s electrical system. I guess that is good.
Back to more totally unrealistic police drama until bedtime. Who wants realism on their day off. Hope everyone had as nice a day.
(Yeah, I used the Spell-check this time to show my regards for the new gardeners on the forum. Is everyone proud of me? Okay…okay, I did blow off that “incomplete sentence” thing as overkill. You garden gurus do know compared to tech websites; you’re downright literary, right? LOL.)

Glad you had a good Fathers Day, Jim.

To me, getting prepared to host 4 different branches of Ray's offspring (albeit with only 1-3 members each) for any meal HERE would mean work for us, and mostly for Ray. While he made it clear to me on the way out that going out to breakfast (the latest reservation they had was for 11 am) was not HIS idea of a good time and he was only doing it to mollify us kids, he didn't have any other proposal for an occasion or location that the 8 of us would have ever gotten together.

My mother's house has spaces where 8 (even 20) people can eat at once, but our house is really specialized for the two of us and we even took out our dining room table when we moved back East. So we would be sitting around in the living room and....no. We had fun but for some reason, took no pictures. We went to The Cheesecake Factory.

One Adam twelve!

(Jim)
1-adam-12. Code 7.
I gave up getting DG loaded on my computer system. I will mail my pix to Kay’s and do things that way for a while. Kay’s screen access program uses so much memory; I would rather not store extras like Amargia’s photo album on her system again. You watch, the problem will turn out to be something miniscule and I’m going to feel like a moron when I finally realize what it is, but for now…
I did find a few nice surprises weeding yesterday.
Photo #1: Daylily ‘Dixieland Band’. This is one Debra (lovemyhouse) gave Amargia years ago.
Photo #2: June is late for my mysterious Old Soldiers Garden hedge roses to be blooming. This experiment came out great. We got the start for these roses when an elderly friend asked us to dig up some feral roses that had popped up on a site where ‘Mr. Lincoln’ roses had been removed years before. Kay thinks the ‘Mr. Lincoln’ were growing on ‘’Dr. Huey’ rootstock and those left behind roots became bushes. Most look like the Doc. The shade of red varies more than what I see in photos and one bush produces roses with a single petal layer. DW theorizes that one bush must have grown from seed and an apple rose was the pollen parent. I am content with all the roses blooming some shade of red and enjoy the little variations. When rose bushes have few thorns, are resistant to mildew and black spot, need little maintenance and have that strong, old-fashioned rose scent; who cares about the name? A rose with no name still smells as sweet.
(Jim)

We have a rose that is the same situation. It was probably some delicate pale pink/coral color originally, but before I knew that roses got grafted I pruned it. It was the year I had just barely not died and Ray had to carry me out to the yard, I with my frail tiny self carefully pruned all the fancy stuff off of it and left only the root-stock, which is a similar dark dark pink blossom. I never smelled it, though. It became emblematic of my having survived being so gravely ill, This year, however, the noxious porcelain berry got entwined with the rose roots. We also planted many rainbow Knock-out roses in that area, but we were saving this one as a symbol of that terrible time, It had to go, though, it was giving aid and comfort to the enemy, which is of course the porcelain berry vine.

Hi old friends. It's been a long time I know. I've been ill. Overwhelmed with financial and self care issues. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers.
My membership is up in a couple weeks.
Each of you will remain in my thoughts & prayers. I have cherished our times together.

Sheri

Oh dear, Sheri. Very glad to see you. Did you hear that this forum is now free, no charge, open, whatever you want to call it? Being a subscriber is no longer necessary! I think that's good,

I hope you are feeling much better and you are always in my thoughts. I hope you'll be on my computer, too!

So when my membership is up (7/7) I can still sign in on the 8th but only access this thread? That'd be kind of nice. Wonder if my name will still be the same or how that works for non-members.
I'm pinching pennies for a van. The VA will provide a scooter after I get a vehicle that can trans[port one.

Sheri

I think you use the same name etc. but will not be able to access most threads. This forum will now work the way the Plant ID forum does, open to all. I'm really happy that people will be able to access Accessible Gardening and hope that past members will come back for this forum

(Jim) Hi Sheri! It’s so good to read your post again here. Also, good to hear the VA is doing right by you, but sad the scooter is now a necessity. Are you still in the same house with stairs to manage? Do you still have your cute little ankle biters?
It looks like I do have some cool blue coming. Blue mist flowers, aster relatives, will be blooming as a tall groundcover in the wilder areas and the ‘Heavenly Blue’ morning glories were planted late and should bloom soon. Kay proclaimed Amargia the Ipomoea Empire on today’s property walk. I guess I did go a little crazy with the morning glories and moon vines and there were already some MGs that had re-seeded. I actually did not know that sweet potatoes were in that family.
I am trying ‘Scarlett O’hara’ in the Old Soldiers Garden. I should have read Plantfiles first and gone with cardinal vine. There is never a question of cardinal flowers being a good red and there has been a problem with Scarlett not being true to type even when the seeds come from ordinarily trustworthy sources. If it is just some white in the center instead of being pure red, that is okay, but I will be disappointed if it turns out too pink. I bought ‘Grandpa Ott’s’ for the purple themed garden around Nadi’s micro-house. There are also ‘Milky Way’ and a no-name pink Kay encourages to re-seed among the dewberry brambles. There is a tiny flowered variety I mistakenly believed were natives until recently. The nickel-sized blooms are sprinkled through the WildPower Garden. Kay calls them African morning glories and believes that they hold the sandy slope making life easier for all the natives planted there. The vines make a thready web over the soil and I see no sign that they interfere with the growth of their neighbors. If Amargia is the Ipomoea Empire, then I am the emperor because I am looking for ‘Kniola’s Black’ (a dark blue in reality) and cardinal vine for the OSG, bush morning glories to top the retaining wall between the MerFolk Garden and the Bee Yard and our native railroad vine now that I know that isn’t what the little white MGs in the WildPower Garden are.
I hope you made it over to this thread, ellonwheels, because there is a psychological trick we discovered for managing 1acre+ properties buried in my chatter. If you break the property up into separate spaces in your head, it will not feel as overwhelming. (You don’t have to give the different areas goofy names. That’s just what we do as a way of talking to one another about specific spaces.))I guess the trick would also work for handling smaller spaces with greater physical challenges. I get a sense of accomplishment when I can say I finished something. I could never say I finished anything if I considered the property as a whole. There is always something more that needs done.
Kay’s doing okay. She put in a very hard day Friday and has slept most of the weekend. Nadi is taking over my job as mow monkey. The bouncing is getting too hard on my back. I’m scheduled for surgery in mid-July. The roid shots are no longer enough to keep the pain at bay.
Fenny at five. I had better close. Kay has found a new way to get us all up and out in the cool of the morning. She plays the harmonica and Fenny-dog “sings” along. It sounds a little like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJNvnJUdMjc
except Fenny is a soprano soloist. What is it with some dogs and harmonicas? It obviously doesn’t hurt her ears. Fenny loves to “sing”.
#1: Put one of mk’s concrete scraps under the fruit to prevent ground rot. Hope it works.
#2: Moonflower (Ipomoea alba)

My husband makes goofy names for our places too, and we only have 0.25 acre.

I think my screen reading system is working well enough to do this now. This is a comment feeding over from the Practical Matters thread, but I like the word “genuflecting best to, Agave. Garden writers should have their own word for that sound and expression of delight avid gardeners make when they encounter a plant they lust for. It is so much better than “cooing”. At least the man did not imply I drooled over a plant. He said that on the Accessible forum in the past. I think he is improving. Another year of work and I may be able to introduce him into polite society.
Okay, here is my story about creatures who really do coo. My GS and I were weeding a flower bed very early in the morning. Well, it would be more accurate to say I was weeding and my GS was playing with lizards and bugs and trying to get out of any real work. It was early enough that mourning doves were still active and singing their haunting songs. A dove perched on the Sheppard’s hook very close by and began cooing, and cooing and cooing.
GS said “what’s that silly bird doing, Mimi? It sounds like he is trying to talk to you. He’s looking at you. Do you know him?”
I said, “Sweetheart, there are many doves living here and I don’t know them all by name (That’s Nadi.), but if it is talking to me what do you imagine it is trying to tell me?”
He sat on the rim of the flower bed and listened to the dove for a while until I said, “Well?
Finally he announced, “Oh, it’s a she bird and she says we should stop pulling up her amaranth. She’s waiting for it to go to seed to feed her babies. I guess we better stop weeding now. We wouldn’t want to make baby birds go hungry.”
Another bird joined the first on the hook and started with the vaguely owl-like cries.
I asked my grandson, “Okay, then what’s that one saying?”
He replied, “That’s the Daddy bird and he says if you don’t listen to the Mama bird he is going to poohall over the lawn furniture and Grandpa Jim’s clean van.”
I gave up. There is Hopi Red amaranth going to seed in that bed. I propped the plants up with bamboo stakes to keep the plants from falling over from the weight of the seed heads and make it look a little neater.
Hey, that was odd dove behavior and I hate cleaning the bird bombs off outdoor furniture. How do I know I do not have a little Dr. Doolittle on my hands?
I was impressed that he remembered the plant’s name was amaranth and had paid enough attention to know that birds love amaranth seeds. The morning’s instructions were only to pull up the ratty looking plants with the reddish leaves. He does love computer games, but he gets bored with them after a while and wants to do things outside. I have high hopes for this one!
Kay*