With silver bells and cockle shells, and cicadas, all in a row...
This picture I took doesn't really show the, uh, beauty, I guess you could call it, of a 13 year cicada. The eyes are really a bright red in color, and the wings are transparent with a reddish tint.
Most of the cicadas are now dead. Their crunchy little bodies are all over the sidewalks, yards, and beneath trees.
Here Justice is looking at a huge pile of dead cicadas. Oh, yes, they cover the bottom of this tree, and nearly every tree around has these bodies beneath it.
Just about everywhere you look, too, are these holes from which the cicadas emerged.
In other news, my little garden that Hope and Justice "helped" plant is doing fairly well. I thought my raspberry bushes were growing nicely until I realized they were actually blackberry bushes. The girls loved picking berries to eat right off the bush. These are some nice, fat, sweet blackberries.
Ripening blackberries sparkle like rubies in the sunlight, don't they? The blackberries underneath are the ones to ripen first, which I noticed after I took this picture. Remember, too, I thought these were raspberries.
Our raspberry bushes produced absolutely no berries whatsoever, though they did grow. We have lots of leaves and thorns, but no berries.
My heirloom tomato plants aren't doing incredibly well, but I do have a couple tomatoes growing. I also have basil, rosemary, mint, and broccoli that are doing really well. Mint tends to take over the entire garden, so I'm keeping an eye on it. I love mint, but a whole garden or yard full of mint is a bit much, don't you think?
I didn't get this spinach planted this year. So many of Mom's seeds are now too old to germinate, apparently. Some are fine, but a few didn't grow at all.
I had a little greenhouse thing where you can germinate seeds in those little pots. Unfortunately, Lampshade accidentally knocked the thing over and we couldn't save the seedlings that did grow.
Anyway...
I have a horrible, nasty, painful infection in my mouth, from a broken tooth. I have never had anything this bad before, and I've had some bad toothaches in the past. The right side of my face is swollen so much that it looks like I'm holding a golf ball in my cheek. I went to the doctor's office today and got a prescription for penicillin. I was hoping the infection would resolve on its own, but I felt sick this morning and was in so much pain I decided that antibiotics were necessary in this case. Plus, I didn't want the infection to travel to my brain. I have enough brain troubles without something like that occurring!
Lampshade is no longer welcome at this house, or in the yard, or anywhere near us. I won't go into the reasons here.
Here he is listening to some music on my Zune. This was the last day he was allowed in my house.
This was also one of the last times I saw my Zune.
My daughter-in-law, Britney, is still in the hospital. The poor girl will celebrate her 21st birthday in a hospital room, unable to walk. Saige and I are planning to bring her a few gifts and a cake. I'm pretty sure the hospital won't let us shoot off fireworks, but a couple gifts might help her spirits lift, even if it's just a little bit.
We keep telling her that she is allowed to be angry and upset about the circumstances she's in now. So many people are apparently telling her that she will walk again, or their words seem phony. Saige told her that this was an unfair thing to have happen, and that she's entitled to be depressed and mad about it. "If you're meant to walk again, you will," Saige told her. "If not, then you won't, but you'll learn to deal with it."
Sometimes Saige is pretty darn intuitive.
She and I took Hope and Justice to the park a few days ago. I decided that I should walk part of the bike trail, so I could see the prairie one more time. It's to the point that walking is so difficult for me, but I felt well enough to try it the other day. I'm glad I did. That area is so beautiful, and it's so close to my home.
I think the prairie is prettiest in the fall, when the colors of the grasses turn to rust and gold, but it's not too shabby in the summer, either.
I did take a photo of Saige almost falling from a swing. She'd flipped upside down and was giggling as I took the photo. I was going to post it, but then I realized that when she flipped, her skirt came up a bit, too. This is not an R rated journal, so luckily for you, and for her, I kept the picture out. I had to mention it, though, so Saige would realize how nice I am.
(I'll keep it for blackmail, though. Tee hee!)
I sold the Escort a few days ago to one of those car parts places. I got 150 bucks and they towed it away, so I felt good about that.
This was right before it was towed away. Sorry about that tree in the middle of the car, blocking it. That was a cute little car until Lampshade punched out the dashboard, tore up the foam padding, and bit pieces off the steering wheel. Not to give all the blame to him, I'm the one who pulled forwards instead of back when the door was stuck in the mud, which caused the door to break. It would no longer close, so we tied it shut with a winter scarf. Yes, it looked pathetic, but it did come in handy the times we didn't have the truck and needed a vehicle.
I guess that's about it for today. I've been spending most of my time cuddling up with an ice pack against my cheek. Even touching that side of my face hurts! The ice makes it feel a little bit better, though, and makes me feel like I'm doing something to help heal myself. The tooth that's bad is one that broke all the way down to the gum, and will have to be surgically removed, which is much more expensive to have done than it is just to have a tooth pulled. It's really difficult to have nice teeth when you don't have dental insurance or money to spend on dental care.
Such is life.
Well, then, go in peace, be warm and filled!
No comments:
Post a Comment