Beaver:

Gradually working up to more energy and improved walking. Hot baths are essential and the hot water quit - again!- a week ago so I have used foot baths and comfrey poultices to keep on track. Amazingly, I finally started the project of new seats and backs for the directors chairs. The refurbished sewing machine - R's Christmas project - is a good as new! Such a joy to work after untold years of iffiness. I hope to finish them in the morning and move them from BR to back/back shed until the screen house is ready. This will hugely de-cluttter the BR. Then I can go on to other sewing projects, as in a foot high of pants to hem for R, to further de-clutter.

The screen house is on hold as Dan did not have time and then was sick so the new priority is R's library. Dan started preparing for the foundation today. it will be a ten by ten by as high as they agree to make it! R has a beautiful library ladder and Dan is insisting the shelves do not go so high they cannot be safely reached! Dan is a grand fund of good sense and knowledge of building. R is arriving on Friday or Saturday. Monday is my cataract op so Monday and Tuesday (dr appointment) we will be in Peterboro; we have arranged an airbnb for Monday night - $62 to stay in a condo in town rather than drive over an hour each way back and forth to Bancroft (60 miles). R plans to visit the Canadian Canoe Museum while I am at the hospital.


I have two new raised beds - one for more strawberries; one can never have too many strawberries! and one for veggies. It is pretty late in the season but if it ever dries out enough for the soil to be delivered, I shall try for peas, perhaps green beans. It is on the north side so should be cooler but still gets lots of sun at this time. In the other beds, I have lettuce galore and carrots, zukes and wax beans flourishing in the one bed and the strawberries are slowly coming along. Along the south wall, tomatoes and peppers amongst the sage, oregano, lavender, clematis and a huge clump of established rhubarb. I am pleased!

An octagonal bed frame - 4 feet in D - is special for a tiny mock orange bush, a baby of the one in Montreal which was given to R by a special friend. She died last year so this will be a memorial. For now, I will surround the baby with annuals, in the fall will plant bulbs - ones that squirrels do not treasure! It is centred outside a large window where our dining table is located.

Maybe the soil can arrive tomorrow - if it does not pour again tonight! Then I can plant the beds. A neighbour came over today and cut some of the high grass and put it into the beds so it will be covered with the soil. The plant roots will have to go deep to get any nourishment from it but I had no other plans for it. Need a better compost pile but have not decided WHERE!

I managed to throw 3 pots the other morning and need to trim the bottoms - maybe tomorrow. It was too cold this am and I was too tired in the afternoon. AND I have an exercycle on the back deck which I have ridden for short periods four days - oops skipped Weds as it was raining! Tonight only a very short time as I was very low in energy. Tuesday I was very pleased with how long I lasted and thought it would increase but my legs were very tired tonight.

This Keto diet is tiresome and I have become less and less good at it. I have not gained more but have not lost any so I am feeling time for a change. I am so fed up I would like to stop eating - but I won't. A new mantra might be -"just because I fell hungry does not mean I need to eat!" One day at a time I am feeling the way forward.

I have been amazed over the last couple months at my improved eyesight and even wonder if I really need this op - but guess I do. In conversation with a couple friends last week, we were talking about supplements that are good for the brain and I mentioned that I had started taking Lecithin a few weeks ago. Joanne said, "Oh, there is Lecithin in my eye pills!" So, we are thinking it is the Lecithin that improved my sight. That is the only recent change in my regime.