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Saturday, February 10, 2007

Planned lunacy

I've been looking through old garden photos to get an idea of where I may do some of my wild scatter planting. I love the idea of lunatic gardening where I pretend to be another of the animals scattering seeds willy nilly. It's not lunacy when animals follow their instincts and do what they do but a human animal tends to do it a little differently. I'm not going to look at my garden spreadsheet which I started years ago. The spreadsheet has all the perennials, self seeders, etc. sorted by location. A nifty devise for keeping me straight but not what I'm going to go by this year. I am looking through photographs though to help give me ideas about gardens past and also help me avoid scattering on top of bulbs. Some of my bulbs are in separate areas that I know to leave alone but some are in spots where I also grow vegetables but have flowers around the edges. Since I doubt I'll have much of a vegetable garden this year, I want to scatter plant seeds for spring flowers in areas that used to be reseved for food crops. It will be nice to have something besides doctor's appointment and scans to think about this spring. Even looking through old photographs adds a planned element to my gardening this spring so I will think of it as planned lunacy. I'll still do some scatter planting willy nilly but avoid spots where I know plants will be emerging soon. I'm not quite nuts enough to want flowers growing on top of other flowers, even if they could survive that kind of competition. The first full week in March, I see my rheumatologist, dermatologist, and have a full body PET/CT scan at the hospital where I've started seeing a medical oncologist. At the end of March I see the FNP at the melanoma clinic where my surgical oncologist is and a few weeks after that I see my pain specialist. These are all routine appointments. It will be interesting to see what the PET/CT scan is like at Rex since my others have been at UNC. My medical ONC said if I wanted to start getting my scans at his hospital which is close to where I live, he could have them sent to the melanoma clinic I also go to prior to those appointments. It will be a lot easier on me to get done 15 minutes away from me instead of having to allow the hour plus to drive to UNC, park, etc. CDs of the scans at UNC are being sent to REX prior to the scan so they will have that for comparison. It's also convenient that UNC healthcare owns Rex Healthcare at this point and the two cancer centers are doing some of the same NCI clinical trials (not for melanoma though). If I was ever in a clinical trial I'd have to do that at UNC or DUKE in terms of what's currently available in this area but I'm trying to assume I won't have a recurrence or need for further treatment. It will be nice to be able to check out new plants, buds forming on old ones and do a little lunatic gardening in between my appointments and scan this spring. Funny how looking through old garden shots I can see that in spite of notes and spreadsheets my garden has always been a sort of planned lunacy. I didn't have the title yet but that's what it is and I like it.

2 comments:

King (Kathie) said...

Carver,

Your pictures are just gorgeous!

I'm sorry that your appointment time is right around the corner. I just KNOW that you will be fine! It's so nice to have a break from being a "patient".

Stay Strong

Kathie (King)

King (Kathie) said...

Carver,

Your pictures are just gorgeous!

I'm sorry that your appointment time is right around the corner. I just KNOW that you will be fine! It's so nice to have a break from being a "patient".

Stay Strong

Kathie (King)