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Saturday, October 14, 2006

Not on Yet

If I've already posted these photos, they are a repriese. I took them this summer and they were in a folder labeled, not on yet, whatever that means. I half recall considering posting them on my blog but I'm too lazy to look back and see if I did. I had a decent appointment with my pain doc Friday. Pretty much a non event. He was pleasant, I was pleasant, he wrote out scripts and said: see you in six months. I said: what happens if I get better and want lower dosages; he said, then call our office and we'll lower the dose. Wow, life is easy when you are in somewhat less pain and your new objective is to get to where you don't need as strong pain meds as opposed to trying to find effective pain management. It hit me, when I left the doctor's office that I am starting to get some improvement from the fourth week of taking the vitamin D prescription, as well as from the physical therapy. What has improved is the new and worsening symptoms so I still need to move past the longer term chronic ones I've had since July of 2005. Improvement is improvement and I'm happy about that. Looking at the photo of my Mandevilla vine on my porch reminds me that I need to think about getting that moved into my greenhouse for the winter. It should be okay with a few frosty mornings but it's not going to tolerate a hard freeze. Funny how relative it is. We're getting all excited in central NC about the first frost warnings of the season being announced for tomorrow morning while Buffalo just had 2 feet of snow. I should think about going out in my garden this afternoon and cutting the late blooming rose I noticed as well as the gerber daisies which are blooming for a last bow to the growing season. I almost hate to cut the late bloomers because it's fun to see a whisper of summer that's giving the dead growth a flash of color. It's also fun when we get a rare late fall dusting of snow to have photographs of the flowers in the snow. I've taken photographs like that is November and also in March when we have the occasional spring snow. We have more sleet than snow and last year we didn't have either to speak of. The birds are mighty busy as if they are anticipating colder weather. I used to feed the birds year round in close to a dozen feeders I had. Now I only feed them if we have snow since they can find a fair amount to eat around my garden year round and I don't mind sharing my blueberries and such with them in the summer and they help clear out the seed heads in the fall. I let the dead seed heads stay in place for the most part and they have become my new bird feeders. There was a time when I was spending almost as much on bird seed and fresh fruit for the birds as I did on groceries for me and my daughter. One year when our roads weren't cleared yet from a big winter storm, at least big for central NC, I walked home from the grocery store with several bags of birdseed in my back pack and two bags of groceries in my arms. My balance was much better back then or I wouldn't have made it home with the icy crust on top of the snow. Even so, a neighbor who spotted me as I was breathing hard and no doubt looked like I was about to collapse, came to my rescue for the last few blocks. Ah memories of my stupid days. These days, if the weather gets the least bit bad, I'll get an emergency bag of birdseed and if I forget, I'll share what I have on hand for me with the birds, if I think they are really in danger of dropping dead in my bushes, which is highly unlikely. The birds tend to have their own strategies for staying alive, I suspect.

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