Three Beautiful Things 08/07/16: Mom Gets Out to the Garden, Mom Returns to the Garden, Perfect Dinner

1.  Especially since her retirement in 1988, Mom has been an avid gardener, loving to grow a variety of flowers and vegetables. Even as her mobility deteriorated over the last several years, she determinedly made regular trips outside, both in the front and the back of the house, and watered, weeded, dead headed, and harvested, often while in significant pain.  This summer, Mom has rarely gardened, but today Carol helped set her up in a chair near one of the large oblong planters, a horse trough, out back and she weeded and dead-headed away. I joined in and started weeding the tangle of grasses and other uninvited guests in the very back of Mom's yard. Mom went at it for over an hour, but as the morning warmed up and the shade disappeared, she came in and rested, sleeping on and off in her chair.

2.  Mom has been sleeping well again over the last week. This is a relief because she had slept fitfully some nights, troubled by weird dreams. I sometimes wondered if Mom was troubled by the anxiety that some where in one of the four corners of the world a neglected flower might need dead heading. Numerous times we've been out with Mom, at a restaurant or visiting someone's house, and she has spotted flowers that needed dead-heading and expressed consternation, sometimes even sneaking in a pinch to get that dead head off the stem. Well, this afternoon, Mom relieved herself of some of her dead head worry. She returned to the back yard and I helped her get set up near planters in the east side of the yard and and tended to the health of several pots of flowers.  This is the first day the summer that Mom has gardened twice in one day, thanks to Sunday's mild weather and the fact that it appears that after a week taking some new medicine, the change in therapy is working.  Especially encouraging has been the improvement in her blood pressure and her heart rate.

3.  After two gardening sessions, Mom and I opened the gate between her yard and Christy and Everett's and pranced over for a delicious pasta dinner with sides of Swiss chard and green salad and enjoyed drinking a little Ste. Chapelle's Soft Huckleberry wine. It was the perfect way to relax after a productive day of yard work.