Joys of the Week

This has been an interesting week. So much joy, and so much crying. I've been worried about my throat, but now I have three different appointments to see if it is an issue. My worry these days is always: if something happens to me, who will take care of mrguy? And if something happens to me who will take care of me? I am tender these days. I saw a film on Wednesday and it ripped my heart out. When I saw my therapist this week I ended the session with a ball of used Kleenex bigger than my head.

I used to never cry. Never ever.

On to joy. I just came back from the front yard, where I was potting wheat grass seeds to make cat grass for my chonky love. I keep a basket of lemons from the tree on the blue chair on the porch for the neighbors -- we're the lemon dispensary for our street. While I was potting, a fancy car rolled up and I didn't recognize the occupants. They rolled down the window and said they were on the lookout for lemons. I ran four of them out to the car. The driver declared that they are our biggest fans. That put a smile on my face. Then I grabbed a few more lemons off the tree to replenish the supply in the basket.

And this just happened. The yellow ginger is blooming. I saw it, stepped into the bed, leaned in, and took a deep whiff. And then laughed because it smells like the cologne from the ABC Store!

Yesterday mrguy and I walked around the island in the middle of our street. He continued home, and I chased down the mailman and gave him our mail. Then I walked up the hill, around and then down the stairs to our street. Without friends to distract me, I stopped quite often and also huffed and puffed, hoping that nobody from work happend to be driving past. Is that weird? On the way down the stairs the color of this bougainvillea against the sky made my heart swell. I captured this sight for mrguy.

Also on my walk, some googly eyes on a tree. Much appreciated, neighbor!

This has nothing to do with anything, but I got a fang-tastic photo of our grand fellow as he begged for a piece of Saturday's breakfast omelette.

I would say that the following is the best news of the week, but it is actually second. Yet, I revel.

In this photo you see flowers, but if you look a little more closely you also see teensy green fruit. This, my friends is our orange tree. "But mrsguy doesn't have an orange tree," you say. That's a pretty accurate assessment. This orange tree came with the house. It was in the "wrong spot" according to certain occupants of our home, so we dug up an apple tree (4 kinds of apples grafted onto one tree) and gave it to our nephew. Then we planted the orange tree in the apple hole.

If this were a 1950s film, newspapers would be spinning around to indicate the passage of time. Nothing has ever come of this tree. In the meantime the lime tree went from major sadness to (eventually, around year 7) solid production. The orange tree is pretty solid, and I've considered ordering scions from UC Riverside, which is the only legal source of live citrus wood. But after my camellia grafting turned out so sad, I lost momentum on this idea.

One of my dear friends who is a landscape designer, and in fact our landscape designer, told me how much she likes to water. I like to prune, but I don't really like to water much. I decided to break the cycle. It's meditative, and I need anything that has that quality right now. And then I got my excellent nozzle and it made watering fun. I started to water in the back yard, even the orange tree.

I have been rewarded. Look at this! Last weekend I was watering during the heat wave and I saw flowers. This week I saw the beginnings of teensy fruits! It's a miracle, I swear. I am so darned pleased.

But the best of the week was dinner with the 'ohana. It's been a year since we've had people over for dinner. And so long since our bandmates have all been in one place with us. They brought food, I made food, and we drank beer and hung out. Caught up on all of the news. Mrguy was in excellent form, and when I was tending to last details in the kitchen he was able to talk with them without me barging into the conversation. The sound of my beloved friends wafting up from the livingroom while I was puttering in the kitchen made me feel surrounded by love. We talked and laughed and ate A LOT in the glow of candle light. And we hugged endlessly as we wrapped up. "Just one more," we'd say and there would be another round of hugs. They said how great mrguy looks. And that was great, as well.

He slept a little better last night after all of the excitement.