Growing vegetables looks easy but it’s not. With unpredictable weather and the onslaught of various diseases, not to mention the challenge of insects and critters like squirrels and gophers that are just waiting to attack, it’s a miracle that anything survives long enough to become edible. But this year I found the golden ticket, CORN! The Birth of a Corn PatchLEARNING FROM MY MISTAKES
I have tried and failed before. Living close to the ocean is great for people but not so great for corn. Corn likes heat, not foggy mornings and ocean breezes. There is so much hope in the beginning when you plant the seeds in freshly amended soil, but hope can be dashed in an instant when something goes wrong. This year I applied what I have learned from past mistakes. I made sure it was warm enough for the seeds to sprout by covering the soil with plastic. I gradually moved the plastic higher to make a mini greenhouse for the tiny sprouts. I side dressed the growing plants with nitrogen rich blood meal, trying in my mind to ignore the obvious source of a product with that name as I mixed it into the soil. My heart swelled as the plants responded to my care. They were actually a little bit more than knee high by the fourth of July. I waited with bated breathe to see if they would mature. The stocks grew vigorously (yay blood meal!) and I finally spied the first tassels emerging from the top of the plants, woo hoo! The tassels were soon followed by tiny silks peeking out of leaf bundles lower down on the stocks. THE BIRDS AND THE BEES OF CORN POLLENATION Corn is a wind pollinated plant. The pollen from the tassels drops down onto the silks with the help of the wind. I didn’t trust nature to just do its thing because it was such a small plot of corn. It was likely the wind would blow the pollen thingies from the tassels away from the plants, so daily I shook the stalks as well as hand sprinkled the pollen directly onto the silks. Yes, I guess this means I am a tiny bit obsessive and controlling but who cares when I comes to having my own corn on the cob. My obsessive compulsive behavior worked. The silks started turning brown and the new corn cobs bulged out as if they were pregnant, which I guess in a way they were. Then the challenge became deciding when to pick them. Supposedly it takes three weeks from pollination for the corn to be ripe. I waited, not so patiently, and yesterday I found some cobs that felt big enough to pick. They looked pretty good but I might wait a few days longer to pick some more. ENJOYING THE FRUITS OF MY LABOR Last night I ate my first ears of home grown corn. They were really good, but somehow I was expecting something more. After all that effort I figured I should be overwhelmed with how wonderful they are. I was just happy - but happy is good enough. I actually have corn to eat and a bunch of corn stalks to use for fall yard decorations. There is a lot more out there. I had over 20 stalks and most of them produced two ears. For the next few weeks I can have corn for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That might be overkill so I’ll give some to my neighbors too. They may not have enjoyed the experience of growing corn but I know they will love eating it.
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TRUE OR FALSE? Deciding what is true and what is not true in the world is a struggle. Every news program has its own perspective. Defining who the heroes and villains are is more often dictated by our political leaning than by what used to be the facts. We now live in a world of alternative facts and we are the worse for it. FINDING THE LOST KING While searching for something to satisfy my Netflix obsession (although I actually found it on Amazon Prime) I discovered an interesting take on finding the truth in The Lost King, a film about a woman’s search for the body of King Richard III. Richard was the English king portrayed by Shakespeare as a ruthless hunchback, who was as ugly on the inside as he was on the outside. But was he really the nasty royal we have come to revile? The film is the true story of Philippa Langley, one of the screen writers, who chronicled her successful search for the grave of this infamous king. She received world wide recognition as part of the team that located Richard III’s remains in a parking lot in Leicester England. THE REAL HEROS Due to her tenacious commitment and extensive research she not only found Richard’s body, she fought for his recognition as a true English monarch. Although she is an amateur historian, Philippa managed to succeed where the professionals had failed. She was motivated by her experiences of being ignored and devalued because of her own physical limitations and she sympathized with the way Richard was treated in the history books because of his deformity. As it turns out, Richard’s remains revealed that he had scoliosis and was not a hunchback as Shakespearean literature indicated. Although he was vilified by the Tudors who succeeded him, in order to boost their own royal identity, Philippa found that Richard, last of the Plangent Kings, was as much a hero as a villain. Philippa seems like a hero to me as well. She did not let the people who dismissed her as different and unknowledgeable, because of her age, gender, and psychological and physical handicaps, stop her from pursuing the truth. Truth can be illusive. I tend to be wary of people who claim to have the only true understanding of anything. But I also believe in pursuing the truth in the way that Philippa Langley did, by digging into historical documents and making comparisons. She did not take for granted what the experts said. Instead she looked at history with a new vision, open to the possibilities that some of the accepted facts were not accurate. TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES We are now in the process of making history. We are moving into another election cycle where the truth will be bandied about and the process of deciding who are the heroes and who are the villains will be front and center. I try to keep up with the latest news and information from as many sources as I can and compare who is covering what on the different networks and how their perspective influences their facts. Of course I have my own prejudices but I want to make my decisions in a thoughtful way. I am aware that those decisions will affect not only my future but also the future of our country. I love when I find a movie like The Lost King. It brings history to life and makes me realize that the search for the truth has been going on for centuries. For me, looking for the truth involves trying to find a new understanding of the way the world works and what my place in it is. I would love to uncover some major new discovery like Philippa Langley, but I am happy to just keep an open mind to what the truth might be in the past, the present and the future. I believe it is possible to get closer to finding the truth when we open our hearts and minds. SLOWING DOWN
I have now entered a phase I never imagined would happen to me, driving while elderly. It’s not a heck of a lot different than driving while young, just slower, like everything else I do. Needless to say I do not drive like the Little Old Lady from Pasadena who “. . . can’t keep her foot off the accelerator.” I can’t keep my foot off the brake. I suspect this is noticeable to other drivers because I get honked at more often than I used to. DRIVING LESSONS I learned to drive by taking driver’s training in high school the summer before I graduated. We started by learning the basics in the school parking lot, which was sectioned off into fake streets with places to make stops and turns. Then we were assigned a teacher who took us out on real roads. My twin sister Linda and I were driving partners. We would trade off driving while the non-driver observed from the back seat. The car had two sets of brakes. The teacher told us it was just precautionary and usually not necessary for him to use his brakes to stop the car except in an emergency. Evidently we provided an emergency because I remember he actually did have to use his brakes. Lin and I had really never driven before taking driver’s training. Dad had decided to turn over that responsibility to the school system. As we slammed to a stop everyone in the car breathed a sigh of relief, especially the teacher. We were glad he had his own brakes and happy Dad had wisely made the decision not to be our driving instructor. During one of our driving lessons, our teacher gave us a brief experience driving a car with a manual transmission. I remember doing very little driving and a lot of uncontrollable lurching. I didn’t try to drive a stick shift again until my ex-husband decided to teach me how to drive his VW Bug while we were dating. When I had stretched his patience to the max (not a particularly hard thing for me to do) he had me pull over so he could take over driving. While I was still in the driver’s seat, he leaned down and grabbed the seat adjuster in frustration, flinging me back hard and fast. This left my short little legs dangling in the air and removed my foot from the clutch while the motor was still running. When my body was flung backward, the car lunged forward, whacking his head into the dash. Although it didn’t seem funny at the time it makes me smile now. CHANGING LANES Eventually I became quite adept at driving a stick shift and even learned a trick using the hand break to navigate the hills in San Francisco. Those days are long gone. Now I don’t even want to drive in San Francisco in a car with an automatic transmission. I avoid driving in unfamiliar places as my brain and reaction time have declined over the years. I haven’t given up driving yet but I have given up driving rental cars. Last summer I took a trip to Minnesota and managed to survive just fine using Greyhound, Uber, and the graciousness of friends and family to get around. One of these days, if I live long enough, I will have to do the same thing here in my home territory. I think about the possibility as I drive around doing errands. It is so nice to be able to just jump in the car whenever I need to get some last minute groceries or garden supplies. I will miss the convenience. It’s just one of the things I will have to learn to deal with among the many changes that come with aging. TAKING A DIFFERENT ROUTE My dad, in his inimitable way, gave up driving on his own. I found out he had had a few close calls before he finally made this decision, but I was happy he did it on his own. I hope I can be as gracious and self aware. After a year of trying to get around without a car he got an electric cart, which he used to go grocery shopping and get to doctor appointments. I can see that as a possibility for me. I hope it doesn’t happen too soon, but I can picture myself in my own little electric cart, chugging down the sidewalk and heading for many new adventures. Like my dad, I don’t plan on letting the lack of driving get in the way of enjoying life. Embracing ChangeREBUILDING MY FENCE
I have finally arranged for my old rickety fence to be torn down and replaced. Being a carpenter’s daughter, I thought I had a pretty good handle on what this involved in terms of the disruption of my normal life. Ha! I didn’t have a clue. Almost every inch of my little yard has been taken over by piles of Quikcrete bags, lumber, tools, tarps and orange webbed construction fencing. It took most of last week for the construction crew to tear down the old fence, dig post holes, clear out old concrete, and put in new posts. Now they are gradually assembling all of the other pieces. By the end of this week a new, beautiful fence will finally appear. OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW It’s made me think about what a difficult process it is to tear out the old and build the new. This applies to life as well as fences. It requires a vision to begin with, and the ability to let that vision evolve. It can be really messy and chaotic when change is happening but I have to trust that eventually it’s going to result in something amazing and beautiful, or maybe just something new and different. As much as I would like to control the outcome, I really just have to accept whatever happens. Fence building is definitely a metaphor for my life, which I realize is always a work in progress. Getting older has not meant that I can just rest on my laurels and not have to work at having a full life. Growth never stops, thank goodness. I would like my life to sail on without any storms but the reality is that chaos and messes are a part of the process. ACCEPTING AND EMBRACING CHANGE I lost a wonderful friend a few days ago. Her death was sudden and unexpected. It was an incredible experience to be a part of the team that helped her through her last days. She left instructions for the person who was coordinating communications with her many friends to post her last words, “We have lift-off.” I have an image of her rising like a rocket from earth and soaring into the clouds. As difficult as it is, the loss of my friend also gives me an opportunity to examine my own life. I am grateful for the upheavals as well as the successes and the fact that I am still learning from my mistakes. I am finding myself willing to let go of some of my old habits, like my bread addiction, and consider what new things I can persue. I am a work in progress too. |
Leslie Masona woman in search of her post-retirement future Guess what! By subscribing, you get notices about the latest Little Old Lady with Cats posts sent to your mailbox!
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(from an entry posted on 5/1/2015) “I definitely fit some of the characteristics of a little old lady with cats: Retired - check, Single - check, Like to knit - check, Have cats - check. . .I do not want to get stuck in my Little Old Lady persona, however. In fact, this blog is a risk taking experiment in exploring and redefining what I want my retired life to look like.” Categories
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