Sunday Snippets 9.10.23

The sun-kissed summer is starting to fade. There are brown crispy leaves on my patio, blown along by the wind.

The trees are getting in the swing of things and the leaves are falling. And every time you think you’ve got them cleaned up, another batch arrives.

I’m mostly just letting them blow around the patio. There’s little I can do, and it’s the nature of things. The leaves whisper that fall is on its way.

I go out with my walker to water the plants. Mine and Ron and Pat’s. Usually Peg’s roses too, as she’s not there all the time yet.

I’m beginning to see chrysanthemums arrive in other yards down the way.

I will enjoy them, since I might not get out to the nursery to get some of my own. They’re beautiful and rounded so perfectly, as though an artist drew and painted them.

The leaves seem to be everywhere now. Dotting all the surfaces. We blinked and there they were.

Lisa two doors down curses the fallen leaves. She’s out there with her broom every day sweeping them away.

I keep telling her they will continue to fall. But she’s waging a battle with them in her little fenced yard.

The canna plant has grown quite tall in my garden. It keeps putting out large, gorgeous red blooms that the hummingbirds dip into.

Learning The Lesson Of Limitations:

Greg was here yesterday. He said I’ve apparently inflamed the area where the new tendon was attached last year.

But he said he was glad to see that I’ve begun to learn my limitations.

When a surgeon tells you that this is it. There’s nothing more he can do. You’d better listen and alter your life to encompass those limitations.

Now I use the walker most of the time. It helps me to straighten my back and hips, which ache a lot.

I tried lying in the bathtub in warm water the other night to see if the ache would ease. But it’s hard for me to get out. I don’t have a safety grab bar low enough to grab onto. The one in my bathtub is too high.

And the office told me I can’t attach more grab bars to the tile. But I will if I have to. Because I can’t afford to fall and break a hip.

I’m looking into those grab bars that you attach with suction or glue. I’m kind of afraid to rely on the grab bars that are attached with suction though.

Have you had any experience with these types of grab bars in your bath tub?

The Heated Mattress Pad:

I even put the heated mattress pad on my bed to help ease the joints at night, and it helps.

Oh, you know what they say about getting old. It sure isn’t for sissies.

And it seems that your life passes so quickly and then suddenly you’re old. You’re having to ask for help when it’s the last thing you want to do.

You have to learn to move slowly. To be more careful. You have to learn to be old when in your mind you’re still young.

Ivy:

Ivy enjoys the neighbors coming in through the patio door to visit. She poses like she’s doing above.

Everyone pets her and gives her the cat treats I always have on hand. She gets lots of attention from Steve and Lisa and Peg.

Lisa brings Kinzi over, and she always goes to the dog treat container I have and gives Kinzi treats. The pets want her to do this first thing before she even sits down. And she accommodates them.

Then Ivy gets on the coffee table next to the blue and white bowl and waits for her treats. So Lisa goes to the kitchen and gets treats for Ivy. It is a pattern they follow every time she or Steve come over to visit.

Steve is headed to Scotland on Wednesday.

What I’m Watching:

Last night I watched the 7th and final episode of “The Lost Flowers Of Alice Hart.” I watched it on Prime Video and here’s the link.

I enjoyed the show because it’s all about empowering women. The flower farm called Thornfield is in Australia. It is a sanctuary for women.

These women somehow learn of its existence and travel there to heal and live their lives in peace.

June never intended for this to happen, for it to turn into a woman’s retreat. But somehow it did.

It’s for women whose voices were silenced by someone stronger and more powerful. The flowers they tend and grow in the fields are a language June teaches them.

These men who hurt them, as June Hart later writes in her flower journal, are also their sons and brothers and fathers.

Life is filled with anomalies. Absurdities that you never imagine can happen.

A Paradox:

Love can be a paradox. This word is derived from two Greek words meaning “contrary to belief”.

How can you love your son, for instance, when you know he hits his wife?

But how can you not love your son, the one you grew in your body and loved his whole life?

June doesn’t want to believe that her son is violent with women. But she knows it’s true because she has seen it first hand.

Sigourney Weaver plays her role as matriarch so well. Her partner is Twig, played by an alum of “Wentworth” named Leah Purcell.

Leah Purcell:

Leah Purcell is outstanding in her role. She’s the more quiet and contemplative partner who loves June, but doesn’t agree with her way of doing things. June loves but at the same time is hard to love.

Lies are like chickens that come home to roost. For an actual chicken, to roost means to settle down for rest or sleep.

For us, however, the expression is not at all restful. When our chickens come home to roost, it means our past mistakes or wrongdoings come back to haunt us.

Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow. But one day the chicken will be at your door.

Leah Purcell was in Wentworth. A show about a women’s prison that I watched months ago.

It may sound like a depressing series, but it was actually quite good. I doubted I’d watch all of it myself until I became hooked on the various story lines.

Where You Can Watch The Lost Flowers Of Alice Hart:

I believe in some areas you can watch this show on Prime Video. I believe the 7 episodes are on Netflix if you subscribe to that. I watched it on Amazon Prime Video.

It is about the women who take refuge at Thornfield. They somehow learn about the flower farm and end up on June Hart’s doorstep. Through word of mouth they travel down the long dirt road and knock on her door.

June never meant to be a matriarch. It was a role cast upon her.

She had her own demons. Three men assaulted her when she was young, and later she gave birth to a boy. A boy she loved who grew up to be a man who was cruel to the women he professed to love.

And so they became estranged, June and Clem.

Because of this estrangement, June had never met her 9 year old granddaughter. Until the day she traveled to the hospital where Alice was healing.

Alice Is Orphaned:

Alice was suddenly orphaned when her parents died in a fire.

June planned to take her back home to Thornfield and finish raising her there.

She wanted to teach Alice the language of flowers. You will learn what the language of flowers mean if you watch this show.

What I’m Reading:

I’m reading a book that Ron gave me called “The Boy From The Woods.”

Thirty years ago, Wilde was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past. Now an adult, he still doesn’t know where he comes from, and another child has gone missing.

No one seems to take Naomi Pine’s disappearance seriously, not even her father—with one exception. Hester Crimstein, a television criminal attorney, knows through her grandson that Naomi was relentlessly bullied at school.

Hester asks Wilde—with whom she shares a tragic connection—to use his unique skills to help find Naomi.

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