All good things

[bwt1213]

Had the surgery mid March.. Looks like it probably didn't work. Can bend my pointer finger even less now and the thumb not at all. Thank God for long/best words.

Had a heart ablation to handle the Afib last month, which seems to have worked. Tired oof the meds. Tired of not being able to push myself in workoutsl After a lot of expensive heart tests that cost me nothing, my cardiologist informed me that I have the heart of a 45 year old. I replied that it was probably less of a testiment to my health and more an indictment of 45 yo's.

Must be all the gardening keeping me healthy. We have around 3,000 sf of flower beds and landscaping. The wife has been pressuring me to hire a landscape firm, but I opted for a teenager. She was one of my favorite kindergarteners, now a senior in high school--an incredible worker, an athlete almost as tall as me.

We've added around 500 new plants (400ish annuals , 100ish perennials) already. Just wave after wave of color as plants bloom and fade. Lot of watering, weeding and deadheading. Last Sunday I clipped 785 dead blooms (I'm a compulsive countr of such things.) She's done many times that number over the last few weeks. And by next week we'll be spending hours cutting more dead blooms.

Yesterday, we sledgehammered out around 400 plus lbs of decorative custom concrete border, expanded those beds with coral bells, hosta, begonia and imatiens. The hosta are Ben Vernoojj with rich cream colors, the coral bells are a rich burgandy alternating with carmel.. Behind that, up the slope we added half a dozen gold standard hosta. That was about 110 plants.

We still have around 150 plants waiting to meet Mother Earth. But, it's just so peaceful. And beautiful.

Not to mention we have a female mallard fly over us squawking every time Wonder Teen is here. We named her Veronica because those blooms had just started appearing. Veronica spends a while foraging in the ponds and then waddles down and visits TW. A bit sad that she's lost her mate, who used to come with her in early spring. Fortunately, mallards don't mate for life.

Hope things are going well your way.

On FaceBook, there is a (site/podcast/documentary/reel?) called Nature Vault all about valuable plants that are little known today or old farming/gardening techniques. Some of the plants would be a boon today and were disparaged or eradicated because no one could make money from them. Others fell out of favor because they could not be raised as row crops. Others could not be mechanically harvested. One, I believe it's called yellow nutsedge, was raised in Egypt and all over Africa. It fixes nitrogen, tolerates drought, and its roots form nodules like small nuts. The yield is about twice that of corn. There's no easy way to harvest it mechanically, it doesn't need fertilizer, doesn't need irrigation, so all the aid organizations aren't interested in it. Foreign companies want the people to raise peanuts, because there are so many products made from peanuts and so much profit to make. But they need fertilizer and irrigation and are not drought tolerant. So the people could raise nutsedge and have food and be independent of outsiders, or work for outsiders and need food aid when droughts come. Yes, it grows in America and was a staple of Native Americans in the desert areas, so the US tried to eradicate it.

It's fascinating to read and listen to. I highly recommend it.