Good Things

As promised, today's post will be about good things, complete with pictures.

First, a picture taken on our trip to Seattle:

 One afternoon while everyone I knew in town was either at the conference or at work, I decided to check out Pacific Science Center. After catching a planetarium show, I sat for a while in the tropical butterfly house, where a butterfly landed on my hand and wouldn't leave. It stayed for so long that one by one a group of at least 10 kids (all of whom had to be under eight years old) and their parents amassed to see "the lady with the butterfly." Several of the kids were trying to stand very still and holding out their hands hoping a butterfly would land on them too. After several minutes the dad of one of the kids standing around offered to take a photo with my phone and this was the result :-)

Second, a photo of me crossing the finish line at my recent 5K walk:

The walk was part of the annual Royal Road Race that takes place at the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a.k.a. "Mountie") training facility, which is here in town. The RCMP cadets were race marshals along the course, and since I was by far the last person left out on the course, once I passed by, the cadets were free to leave their posts and head to the finish line for brunch. One cadet decided that she would walk with me to the finish line, and everyone after her followed suit. By the time we reached the finish line, I had quite an entourage of Mounties in training, and was greeted as I crossed by four Mounties in uniform. They seemed to know that I was really struggling, that I wasn't sure I would make it, and without making a big deal about it, they rallied behind me to give me the momentum to push through to the end.

Third, evidence that Jeff was happily on board with this project at first:

The previous owners of our house had young kids, and they built a giant sandbox in which was housed a large play structure. When they moved, they took the play structure and we were left with a 16' x 15' sandbox. My immediate thought was that this would make a lovely raised garden bed if we put some dirt on top of the sand. But then I realized that it would be necessary to have some place to walk, so we got the idea of putting down some bricks or paving stones. But then we realized that those would just get covered up by the dirt, so we would need to essentially build raised garden bed walls around the walking path. The last thing anyone needs to do just after moving into a new house is undertake a major project like this, but the garden needed to be planted right away because of the short growing season here, or there would be no garden until next year. Somehow it seemed like a good idea at the time.

So long story short, what was supposed to be an afternoon project wound up essentially to be three full days plus four evenings of Jeff's time. I helped as much as I could, but with my mobility issues, fatigue, and problems with coordination, I was not able to do as much as I at first had hoped I would be able to do. Jeff is not exactly a natural with a power drill, so normally I would be the one to drill all those pilot holes and put in all those screws, but given my limitations Jeff courageously volunteered. There are places where the boards are crooked, where they are spaced such that there is quite a bit of screw visible between two boards, and where the screws go in at angles, but it is perfectly functional and none of those minor construction issues are really even visible now that the garden is filled with dirt (which Jeff moved from the pile 40 feet away one wheelbarrow full at a time, carefully placing each shovelful of dirt in the garden).

Yesterday we planted peas, lettuce, two kinds of carrots, two kinds of beets, Swiss chard, yellow zucchini, and two kinds of potatoes. We left room for a couple of tomato plants and pepper plants which we will buy at the garden center and plant in early June. By the time it was all done I am pretty sure that Jeff had had more than enough of building, prepping, and planting, but hopefully when we harvest at the end of the summer it will have all been worth it :-)