Tuesday Blues

So it is another ritual that I have to do, going back to the clinic for those lab tests. Two full syringes of blood in each arm. There were about eight or nine lab tests done this morning. It’s been three months since my last visit to my endocrinologist. She hasn’t seen the result of my colonoscopy yet and the final biopsy of the two polyps that the gastrointerologist removed. One down the line, something I don’t need to worry about until two or three years from now.

My blood pressure is normal and I finally gained 2 lbs. since my last check-up. I am 121 lbs. now. Still good enough I guess because my doctor friend (a classmate in grade school) told me to gain a little more. Since mom’s death, I’ve been eating rice twice a day. So lazy to prepare elaborate meals. I bought dried squid and dried anchovy, half kilo each, good enough for breakfast with chili flavoured vinegar. Dried anchovy could be cooked in many ways.

Josef helped me prune the Fukien tea plants yesterday. If I only knew how to make bonsai, Fukien tea is a perfect choice, it is sturdy and doesn’t need much care.

And I started reading again. Funny how the words are sinking in now.

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Hobbies (dailyprompt-2083)

I need not elaborate on this because all the while since I started blogging, I’ve often wrote about it.

Blogging, reading, gardening, photography, experimenting menu/dish in the kitchen.

Not necessarily in that order. I started reading a lot wayback in high school. I did more serious reading when I worked at the Humanities Section as student librarian at the Univ. Of Santo Tomas Main library while at the same time earning my degree in BSC Economics. You can just imagine my delight encountering all those books on Philosophy, Ethics, Psychology, Literature, History and fiction books. I am still reading until now, collecting a sizable number of books and learning more because of them.

I started blogging here back in May 2009 and its been a long journey of finding myself writing about life, my family, my health, friends, faith and everything that I think are worth-sharing. I have often said that blogging has become a way of life for me. So grateful for meeting friends here who have stayed with me all through these years.

Gardening is something I do to keep myself busy. There is something fulfilling touching the earth, making plants grow, nurturing them through the years. Done cleaning the yard of unwanted grass, pruning and everything, well, except trimming our carabao grass. I cleaned the stepping stones of those creepers that grow when it rains almost every night here. My bottle gourd is bearing tiny fruits now.

I used to experiment doing shots and memes on my Canon Ixus camera but now I am just using my point and shoot cams of my cellphone and tabs. They do the same job but somehow limited. I had this ambitious dream of keeping a journal identifying all the plants in our small garden. I have collected hundreds of photos and maintain them in several albums on FB. I also have a separate blog here on gardening.

I like experimenting in the kitchen. I used to bake simple sweets and loaf bread but since I found out I have diabetes, that has stopped. I cook recipes culled from some Pinoy sites on YouTube but I still prepare those I learned from Dad when I was growing up.

Now that I have so much time in my hands, I am planning to reorganize the books I have collected over the years. Nissa transferred more of her books to their new house. She left the Harry Potter series which Josef read from time to time. He also has a collection of Archie comics, Calvin and Hobbes books and some Science books.

What is your favorite hobby or pastime?

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Getting There…Somehow

We have finally completed all the requirements to transport mom’s urn to the province including the registry at the LCR (Local Civil Registrar) which was needed to authenticate her death certificate.

Lighting candles every night, hearing mass online and praying the rosary are my daily rituals nowadays. I temporarily lost my interest in checking my WordPress blog. Even reading has somehow lost its appeal. I started gardening again usually in the afternoon when the grass is dry enough to uproot unwanted weeds. It rains almost every night. I transferred my Camia plant from the pot to the ground. Its local name is white ginger. It has many rhizomes. I already planted six but there are still more which I plan to grow in pots. When the rain stops, I will. The lovely scent of its flowers are intoxicating. It flowers during rainy days. Sometimes I wish all of my garden blooms are white. The Kamuning and Amazon Lily blooms smell sweet and fragrant too.

This is how the flowers look like.

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Sunny Wednesday Morning

My nightly ritual has changed. It used to be that I could stay awake until 11pm or 12am just reading. Every night nowadays, I feel so sleepy at around 7pm, wake up three times at night. Sometimes I wake up around 10 pm and feel that I have already slept for too long.

I seldom take a nap now during the day because I am afraid my hearing aids would fall off my ears. When I do, I take a nap about thirty minutes sitting down with so many pillows behind my back.

You might think it is unusual to garden at 5am, but I did early this morning pulling stubborn weeds that have grown by leaps and bounds because of the rain we always have every day. It saves me watering the plants early in the morning. Our carabao grass needs trimming too but I’m still quite lazy to tackle such. Cleaning the yard with dogs’ poop is sometimes taxing enough. We have six adult dogs and six puppies outside, they stay either at the dirty kitchen or under our car at the garage. The six puppies were promised to Jovy’s friends and officemates. I wonder when they’ll be able to dispose of them.

There is another book that I gave ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to last night. Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim is one such read, beautiful, warm and inspiring. It’s a love between a white child and her black wet nurse. It might not be a good one for some who know more of the slavery in early America but I just love the flow of the story.

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🎵When I Was Small….🎶

Got this from Inspire Positive

Every time May comes, I am always reminded of the song of the Bee Gees, First of May. April is gone, an uneventful month except our simple celebration of mom’s 94th birthday.

I am so lazy nowadays, always buried in books and some e-books on my Reader. I haven’t been walking for the last two weeks now. I used to leave the house at around 5:30 am, lately though even at 5:00 am, it is already bright outside. During summer, days are longer and we are in the middle of the summer season. I was able to garden though, very early in the morning. I water the plants twice a day because of the heat. The soil easily dries up.

I recently updated my blog on Nate re: the recognition day of their school. He got two medals, Best English Speaker and High Honors Awards. Proud Nonna here. Time flies, can’t believe he’ll be in Grade V next.

Here’s the link if you have time to visit. Thanks!

https://nonnaarlene.wordpress.com

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The Carousel

In between my slow reading and blogging, I managed to read some fiction books. I just finished The Carousel by Rosamunde Pilcher. I have about fifteen of her earlier books plus one trilogy which I patiently collected over the years. My favourite of course is The Shell Seekers which I have already read twice. I have always been fascinated by books about Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland. I love those open spaces, beaches, the weather and castles.

Of course Pilcher is my favourite too. The Carousel is a delightful read, nothing fancy there but several comforting lessons on loving, friendship and family ties. And of course beautiful scenery too of Cornwall. One of these days, I’ll reread her other books.

The sun hasn’t shown its face for two days now and it rains at night. I was planning to trim those birds of paradise I planted outside but they are so wet, so inconvenient to remove the dried leaves and flowers.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent for the year which culminates on Easter Sunday. Here’s the lovely prayer for the day on sacredspace.ie.

Dear Lord, help me to be open to you

for this time as I put aside the cares of this world.

Fill my mind with your peace, Your love.

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Saturday Delight

Good morning🤩

Just updated my blog Gardens and Empty Spaces early this morning. Sorry, the link does not work on a tab.

I am saving on space so all my garden photos will be posted there. So glad to see my insulin plant with a flower, it is so lovely. I took shot of it of course. If you can’t see the link, you can visit my site and click Gardens and Empty Spaces.

https://arlene1027.wordpress.com

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Life As It Is Now

I think the last time I wrote a post was almost two weeks ago. This has never happened before even when I was on chemotherapy twelve years ago when I have just started blogging. I was able document my treatment.

I guess the longest time when I haven’t even visited WordPress was when I got sick with Covid. Having Covid and fighting it is not really worth blogging about, it does not deserve such.

To tell you the truth, I suddenly lost interest in blogging and sharing my thoughts in cyberspace. Maybe I deserve this hiatus, maybe not. And again I am sorry that I haven’t commented on your posts lately.

I could do just about anything now except gardening though I was able to trim some of our Pandakaki plants and Josef started cutting the carabao grass, finished a third of it. Some of our stepping stones are showing now. It may take several afternoons yet before we could put it into order. Really need to replant.

I took shot of our large jackfruit fruits which have grown bigger while I was sick. Our lone papaya tree has lots of fruits too. Our kalamansi trees are presently flowering but there are large fruits that we haven’t harvested yet.

I got engrossed again reading. An eclectic mix of historical, romance and lately started a book by Thomas Merton. It isnot the type that you read in one seating so I am biding my time reading it.

I haven’t been to the doctor yet. I still don’t have a normal sense of hearing. Still afraid to go out.

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Thank God It’s Friday

I was looking for the maintenance crew of our subdivision if one  of them could help me with weeding outside our perimeter  fence but one of our neighbors said that the management of Midtown removed them.  I am willing to pay their daily wage. Sad, for the plight of those who really need help to make both ends meet.

So I started uprooting and weeding unwanted grass early this morning. It still needs a little improvement. I was able to  transfer some snake plants though. Snake plants are so costly here, around P250 to P300 per pot. Sometime last week,  a lady older than I am just uprooted some without  asking for permission.  I hate  it when people are so presumptuous, that is equivalent to stealing, right?  I was in the garden pruning some plants when she passed by. Years ago, we used to have climbing roses in that area but every time they bloom, some passersby even bring scissors to harvest the flowers. So annoying.

My news feed is full of  unwanted sites posting some titles of books listed this year as worth-reading.  Haven’t heard most of their recommendations. Even those which won at Goodreads are so unfamiliar to me. I have two books in mind though to cap  off the year 2020.

These have been on my TBR for more than a couple of years now. They’re next.  Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel which is considered as a classic of the Harlem Renaissance. A Wild Sheep Chase is my first book of Murakami.

Have a lovely and blessed weekend to all of you.

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Something Orange

Glitches again?

I don’t know what happened earlier today. For some reasons, I could not publish my post and when I opened another window and tried publishing it, only a third of it was published so I erased the whole thing because I could not even edit it.  Sometimes, it is just so frustrating when you’ve done something you need lots of patience in the process to finish.

Orange is not exactly  a favorite color but since time immemorial, I have loved things with the color orange. When I was done with my chemotherapy years ago, I blogged  about this color (twice) and one of my friends honored me by wearing orange polo shirt to work.  He sent me a picture with a small note attached to it.

Accordingly, “orange combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics. Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation. It is the color of fall and harvest”.

What inspired me to blog about it today? I saw these lovely orange blooms of my Cassandra plants while I was pruning and weeding early this morning and I took shot of one cluster of flowers. A vibrant and fiery orange bloom.

Sometimes I wish I could grow one color of blooms in my garden. I specially love white. It’s a good thing I have some of them but I miss my Gardenia bush. I don’t know if it is a coincidence again (something happened last week that made me smile and I asked my friend on FB if it was a coincidence. Wilma, you know about this, right?).  A friend, a mother of one of Nissa’s best friends sent me a picture of a lovely white flower and she thought I could identify it but  it was the first time that I saw it. She said that they grow  plants with scented flowers in the garden because her Mom likes  them.  Gosh, how did she know I was also thinking  of my Gardenia? All I have now by way of scents and smell are my Kamuning plant and the flowers of our two calamansi trees.  She told that she would plant some cuttings of their Gardenia and will give me one.  Wow! Dreaming of those heady scents again.

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