In the pink

 

This is what life looked like at my house the last time I was there…Friday.

Today I woke up feeling a lot better. I said “This is better Barbara day.”

 

My view today is a bit different looking

This was a minor inconvenience, but with necessary results 

This plastic vest has tubes for pressurized air all through it that vibrate which loosens up the stuff in my lungs to help me cough. My main discomfort was that I sweat. It definitely doesn’t breathe ha ha ha ha but first you’re going to sweat and eventually you get to breathe.  Bronchiectasis means chronic coughs and the goal is to cough the stuff out.

Sorry about this crazy formatting.

The other thing that finally happened was getting a medline- a longer IV line for me to keep getting antibiotics. The first 7 tries gave 3 that lasted for less than 24 hours…apparently my veins clot up and block further stuff from getting in.

They tried once with a muscle injection, and it was the worst pain I’ve ever had. 

 I am quite unhappy with how long it took to get this better, more permanent line in.  Three doctors and repeated nurse calls, and finally it’s done. I don’t know what ports are like but this is shorter than a PICC line is all I know.

I am waiting for my first dose of antibiotics since yesterday’s muscular hell around 9 am - which I don’t think is a good span without antibiotics…it’s 3:30 pm when writing this.

The good news is having great laughs with a female EKG ultrasound technician while she took pictures of my heart and with the phlebotomist who had his own ultrasound machine to put in the new IV. He is from Sarasota FL, and she is from near Boston MA. They both are traveling employees of HCA, which owns our hospital.

An answer to a question several people asked, how did I get this infection? I pumped the third Dr who’s visited me about staph pneumonia 

Airborne probably since it’s in my lungs probably from someone who was sick. Then he proceeded to try to be sure I didn’t become a hermit.  

It’s not likely! These are some things I learned from the pandemic - I will definitely wear masks around strangers more.

And wash my hands more often and try to keep fingers out of eyes and nose.

——————

He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done, is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling. -

Johann Kaspar Lavater, poet, writer, philosopher (15 Nov 1741-1801)

You know it's spring

 

Perhaps I've posted this view from my windows before. Memory isn't all that great today.

Happy Easter to those who celebrate!

Dawn on nearby mountain top March 29. Some days I stay inside and enjoy the view ...but some days I just must drive around to see what's blooming. You'll notice here a little dogwood tree is just by that ramp to the other apartments.

Dawn hits the mountain top on April 2...blooms have appeared.

On the other side of that building is a pink dogwood.

Posted this dogwood back on March 24...

And here it is in full bloom April 1.

I did drive around and called it my dogwood tour of Montreat and Black Mountain. The white blooms just are such great punctuation marks in the greyness of deciduous trees, or against occasional evergreens.

Through the windshield looking downhill.

Not my photo, but the swallowtails have appeared again!

On Rhododendron Ave. coming from the Lakeview Center on April 2.

More of the pink dogwood variety soon!

If your compassion does not include yourself it is incomplete.

JACK KORNFIELD

Hither and yon

Here are a few more shots from home...where spring was just beginning and then I left!

Looking down the "courtyard" past our pink dogwood to see the white one at the furthest apartments.

The pink dogwood still has some blooms, though many branches are past blossoming.

Early buds on the azaleas outside my kitchen.

YON (Florida):

My daughter-in-law's Moonlit Macarons display in St. Petersburg FL.

MORE YON (say Colorado)

View outside front windows of my youngest son's home in Cortez, looking towards the back side of Mesa Verde

I asked for blueberry pancakes, and my son fixed these fluffy ones...here making notes with is wife on the ingredient list in the cookbook!

They were delicious!

The fabulous kitchebn window looking out the back view of their yard.

Today's quote:

You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now. 

Joan Baez

Spring blossoms in Black Mountain

Looking east on  State St. in Black Mountain.

 

In downtown Black Mountain, I found another dogwood.

Outside my living room window are a couple of dogwood trees, barely visible on Friday April 4. It was in the 80s the day I took this photo.

Same view on Sunday, April 6, between rain. The  dogwoods show better on foggy days.

 A few days later, the temperature is forecast to be 31 at night. So all the little plants on the balcony and porch have been brought inside to have steady temperature and just a bit of sun and water (a friend has volunteered to come over once while I'm gone to visit my son and wife for about a week.)

Redbuds along the railroad tracks, which aren't being used since damage from the storms 6 months ago. I've read that trains are again rolling from TN to Asheville, but not from the center of the state to Asheville. Many tunnels and tracks were damaged with the infrastructure needing extensive repair through the Old Fort pass.

Today's quote:

When we stop worrying about unimportant matters, we can devote so much more of ourselves to what is truly important.

Melli Mac's blooms

 Melli Mac's Garden Shack is a local Black Mountain nursery. I stopped in last Saturday to pick up a couple of posies to have on my porch before my apartment inspection on Mon. this week. They won't be looking for flowers of course, but to see if I keep the stove and refrigerator clean and working. Ha ha, I'll surprise them. Well, other tenants are also putting a few blooms outside so I have a couple.

I enjoyed snapping photos of a few things I saw.

Just look at all those dogwood blossoms!

A sweet redbud by the ramp into the office building.

And for once the camera caught the closest flowers rather than the background!

Sharing with Floral Friday Fotos.

Today's quote:

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization. 

-Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

Modern and traditional

 

A beautiful dogwood, and a couple more closer to the house which don't seem to have as many blossoms.

And another thing...

One of the local restaurants where I pick up a to-go dinner sometimes. They often have quite a crowd, and it's almost impossible for social distancing.

Today's quote:

Aborigines know they do not own the land but are a part of it and it is their duty to look after the earth.

Daily Om

The greening of the mountains

An attempt to show the greening of the mountains...one of the joys of driving around these mountains and seeing how the budding leaves start on lower slopes.

A beautifully landscaped yard which shows off spring colors very well.

A couple of older Redbud trees.

 Finally a nice healthy dogwood blooming. Not that many this year!

I recently read that when the tops of the mountains are green, there's no danger of frost and plants may be put out.

Today's quote:

It’s in that convergence of spiritual people becoming active and active people becoming spiritual that the hope of humanity now rests.

VAN JONES

This red/pink dogwood outside my front porch

Thoughts to consider:

To The Beloved Gardner.

Some of our deepest wounds,
Are judgments, self-inflicted,
Endless paper cuts upon our spirit,
Made by an inherently imperfect 'self',
Despising its imperfection.

When in fact, the green-stemmed fruit,
The infant petals in a sheltering bud,
Are as they should be, in their time,
On schedule to arrive, in their time,
In this Dream of passing seasons.

For here, in The Garden of Time,
What is not yet, becomes what is,
And what is, becomes what was,
And our manifest Being, ever ripening,
Is not yet, now, as it will be, then.

On this Path of Love and Surrender,
Tend gently the seedling of the Heart,
Doing the needful, as you are able,
But then Surrender, giving yourself over,
Sweet unripened...To The Beloved Gardner.

Chuck Surface

In The Garden of The Beloved Facebook