Blisters

On my feet.  I gots 'em.  Spending a great deal of time walking of late and working in the garden and regardless of the fact the I wear good shoes I get blisters.  I think this is my mother reaching out from the grave and saying her famous line  "I don't know why you got (fill in the blank).  It doesn't do (fill in the blank again).  Some of our biggest fights were over my choice of footwear and her insistence that I were heels or flats with a too small toe box.  I rebelled with my footwear, moreso as I got older.  So in addition to blaming mother for the blisters I am also blaming sweating feet and rubbing toes.  My feet seem to be misshaped from years of toxic footwear.  And a small blister from yesterday turned into a massive blood blister on my big toe today, a gift from a long walk into the art fair in East Lansing, where I swore I would not get anything I could not carry home and I ended up carrying home a too heavy garden sculpture make of iron and stone.  A gift for the house, specifically for the back yard.

This house has received more gifts from me than I can count.  First the gift of me.  Then the remodel, the new rugs, furniture, lamps, the new kitchen, the new bathroom and the countless gifts of filling the house with home goods, like sheets, towels and sundries.  I must learn to acquire less and enjoy what I have.  But this piece of rustic rusting iron with a bevy of stones spoke to me, in a zen sort of way.  So home it came to be placed between the deck and the patio. 

More gifts.  The rose bed...looking good.  I think I now have twelve rose bushes.  Most are floribundas.  Some are ground cover.  They are set to bloom in a week I should think.  The area on the side of the house where the roses dwell gets full sun and the soil is very clay-like.  Roses love clay soil.  Also I threw in a handful of ten penny nails in each hole I was planting the rose in as they also love iron.  And the roses last year, the first year of my rose garden, were spectacular.  Fragrant and beautiful. 

Monday promises to be a busy day as I have therapy and then Sophie, ah yes, Sophie whom we have heard little of since her retirement, is taking me to a nursery to get a flat of flowers to border the rose garden.  I would like to get some potted flowering annuals to spruce up the House. The House That Must Be Fed.  I think that is why I had the flood three weeks ago.  Not paying homage to the house.  Well more flowers are coming, baby, and all will be right.  No more floods...please...pretty please.  I should also like to pick up a patio tomato plant just because.  My small vegetable garden is doing splendidly, as is my herb garden.  Today I put the larger tomato plants in bondage, circling a cage about them.  And I have been watering them and caring for the gardens.  All that I currently have is planted so of course I want more to plant.

Mrs. Kravitz from across the street showed me her garden and patio today.  She has really paid homage to her home.  Pots of flowers everywhere the eye looks.  I don't want to go that crazy but then she has lived there over forty years and has collected lots of pots and lots of ideas.  I rely on my sensibilities.  I have pots in the garden but they are not suitable.  Her pots are lovely.

So anyway off to Van Atta's we will go.  I have to be home by 4:00 as the Old Duffer is coming by to play guitar with me and I am hoping he would like to do so on the front porch and take advantage of the weather.  Last Sunday, the 15th, it snowed.  This week not so much.  It was lovely in every sense of the word.  The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la.  After Old Duffer leaves my friend Eastman is coming by to set the TV up.  See there is another present for the house.  A great deal I could not pass up on a newer TV than what I had.  A 4K UHD TV...Yahoo and all that crap.  Eastman will get the older one for a small price and he will make good use of it.

That should be all the presents for the house for a long time.  I should be receiving a check from the insurance company for my loses in the flood.  Four itemized pages of loses.  Who knew I had that much stuff in the basement.  It was as if another person had taken up residence in the basement and it was she who sustained the loses.  Still I am waiting for money like manna from heaven.  It has only been a week since the paperwork has been filed but dang give me the money.

And so dear children as the moon is full and so am I off to bed I go with dreams of flowers in my head.  Up early to take a walk and do some grocery shopping...gotta get my steps in, and then a 12:00 therapy sessions, home again, home again jiggidty jig and off to Van Atta's.  Too bad I ain't all that tired.