and some rays of hope

bare evans bali cherry at early sunset

I love working outside at twilight this time of year.  A couple of weeks ago I was putting away the rain barrel, shutting off the outdoor tap, taking up the fencing around the garden and a bunch of other little 'shutting down the garden' odd jobs.  I was working hard and sweating a bit, and noticed it was getting dark.  I looked up, and there were some crows gathered in the cottonwood tree, cawing.

Some say that's a bad omen- and maybe it was, given the news we got of Gita's cancer not long after.  

But I enjoy the noise of the crows- as awful as they sound- they're still active and undeterred by the cold.  They bring a little life to the winter landscape.  The same way-- I like the melancholy light of the winter sunset.  Sad, but beautiful.  A little reminder of what we had in the summer and will have again soon enough.

I was pruning the roses this weekend and had the same sort of experience- of being lost in garden work- everyone else; family, neighbors, was inside with the lights on, Xmas trees lit up.  I was cutting the rose canes and weaving them in with the blueberry bushes and cherry tree to keep the rabbits and  mice out.  I looked up and saw the end of a beautiful sunset on one side, and the full moon coming up on the other.  I stood quietly for a moment, in awe of the simple beauty of this everyday thing.  In the middle of the city, it felt like I was there alone with two of the great forces of nature. 

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It hasn't been all sublime outdoor experiences these last two weeks.  Just the opposite.  Gita had her first chemo treatment at Mayo and I found out just how hard it is to care for a seriously ill wife and two small kids.  Friday was hard, but Saturday was a little bit better, and by Tuesday- today that is- she's almost back to her normal self.  

We have to do this seven more times.  Seven more times of Gita being injected with poison, becoming incredibly sick, and a slow recovery.  Each time she'll get weaker they say.

Then a mastectomy most likely, followed by radiation.  She's a healthy young woman, they say- she can take it. So they're giving her everything in their bag of tricks.

I appreciate the doctors at Mayo.  They've been thorough and  very honest with us throughout the process.  This really is the best medical treatment my wife could get.  

At the same time, it seems to be that cancer treatment hasn't really advanced much since I watched what it did to my mother, 20+ years ago.  The same procedures- chemotherapy, surgery, radiation.  For all of the advancements that are supposed to have been made in the fight against cancer, it's still the same sort of barbaric-seeming stuff.  More akin to something the Spanish Inquisition would have invented.  First they poison you, then cut you, then they burn you.  Of course at the end, you're still alive, at least if they did it right.

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How this came to be, I don't know.  It's out of my hands.  I have to trust them to heal my wife.  

We've had a couple of snow falls since the last post.  It has already started to melt, but there's no question that it's winter now.  The kale is still soldiering on though.  There's no sign yet that they've given up. 

I like to leave the kale standing through the winter.  Partly because I like to keep  harvesting it-- or more correctly- Gita keeps

harvesting it for curry and saag until we finally get some below-zero weather that finally browns it up.  Usually that's some time in early to mid December.  The other reason to let it stand is to be food for the rabbits.

I know most gardeners don't want to do anything for the rabbits, and like I mentioned earlier, I'm trying weaving rose thorns into the blueberries to keep them out.  

But in the veggie garden, there's no damage that the rabbits can do from now until some time in late April.  That's when I put the rabbit fence back up.  In the meantime though- from some time in November until spring the rabbits leave behind something valuable in the veggie garden.  Rabbit pellets (or poop if you prefer) are wonderful natural fertilizer for the garden  with an NPK ratio of 2.4-1.4-0.6 (comparable or better than the sought-after chicken manure, but a lot less work).

Gardening organically means trying to establish a balance in the garden, creating a 'food forest' as the permaculturists like to call it.  I like to think of our little eighth-acre yard as being a part of a regenerating urban ecosystem, with foraging rabbits, hawks, owls and semi-tame cats as predators, and our yards and gardens at the base of the pyramid, feeding the fauna, and taking something back from them as well from time to time.

It's good to build resiliency into the system by harnessing natural systems, especially in times like these.  As oil becomes harder to extract, as the financial shows itself to be more and more corrupt, as the fabric of the larger society begins to come apart- it's good to know that the rabbits and the fruit trees will be there.  The greens will end up being far more useful than the greenbacks sometime in the near future, I think.

PS- regarding this picture- the kids are so happy to have mom home all the time now.  They know that she's sick and that they have to be 'extra super good' because she doesn't have much energy.  But they're happy just to have her home, energy or not.  They mostly like snuggling with her anyway.  That's our silver lining for the week.