The broken arm blog

Last Friday I tripped and broke my arm. Now I am doing everything with one arm. So everything I was doing before I now tag on “the one armed” in front of it to describe myself. I am a one armed blogger, a one armed gardener, a one armed cook – well, you get the idea.
I am typically very busy person so it’s really hard to sit with my arm up to reduce the swelling while I wait a week for surgery. As a gardener, I enjoy walking out every day and surveying my plants. I know each one and its little story, where I got it, where it didn’t do well, and how it like its new location. I can still go out walk around and look at everything, but I can’t pull any weeds or do much puttering around. We’ve had plenty of rain the last few days so my plants have not a really needed me at all. In fact, they are thriving in my absence. I, however miss them quite a bit.
With my camera mounted on the new tripod, I went out in the late afternoon light and took a few photos. They look a little blurry and far away but that’s a good metaphor for my life right now.
I did manage to get a close-up of my fragrant mimosa, blooming for the first time ever. (see photo at top) As a kid growing up in West Texas I enjoyed the mimosa trees we had in our neighborhood. Now, of course I realize that those were all invasive trees. I was careful to get the native variety for my yard. It smells just as good and it’s such a sweet, delicate little tree.
Here are the evening Primrose. This little patch didn’t do so well last year but with all the rain we’ve had it’s quite happy this year.

Here’s the little xeric garden and behind that is an assortment of native Texas plants.

The Engelmann’s daisies and standing Cyprus are both in bloom right now.

This is a patch of Salvia, mealy blue Sage, with some wild to vetch mixed in.

And here are my little vegetable gardens. The squash plant in the foreground (near the spider wort) has two tiny little squashes. I bought four different kinds of squash seeds and they were the most productive of all the seeds I bought. In the beginning I had it all figured out but now I have no idea what kind of squash is what out there. Thankfully I’ve never met a squash I didn’t like so it’s all good. The back row is herbs and onions. I have one pretty hardy looking Romaine lettuce plant and a couple of Swiss chard that Fosco might enjoy. The other square-foot garden has more mystery squash, some peas – another offering for Fosco – carrots, chives, and a tomato plant. I have a bunch more tomatoes in the greenhouse. The one that I put in there in the fall has done so well that I thought I would try raising most of them in the greenhouse.

Maybe I needed this time off. The first couple of days I was a little down, mostly just dopey and in a lot of pain. One day I felt really sorry for myself and I went out into the greenhouse and cried as the rain hit the plastic top. I’ve had my share of grumpiness, usually followed by feelings of guilt, sometimes followed by extreme gratitude. My son has been a real standup guy, my friend Marie has been terrific in bringing things over to me, the neighbors are very sweet and concerned, and both Janet and Mary Ellen have helped me through some grumpy times by listening to me whine.
After I went to the doctor on Tuesday things turned around for me emotionally (OK, I know there was still some whining). I do like this doctor. I feel very confident that he’s going to do a good job on my arm. So, after the surgery, I can start healing. I leave you with this graphic of the affected area.

Sometime late Tuesday my version of this will have a lot of metal in it. I found myself wondering today if those super strong tiny magnets that I have will stick to my arm now. The old science teacher in me can’t wait to try.