Mom's 92nd birthday

This week I did all the planting I’m going to do for the season, and again I’m resting after a day’s work.  It’s too early for a drink, so I will write this and enjoy a glass of wine later while I listen to Korean cds.  I bought an Italian plum tree and some herbs early in the week and put them on the south side of the house near the tiny hazelnut tree I had purchased at the Tai Chi Club’s plant sale.  Today I went to a wonderful garden store in Coldstream and found out that contrary to what I had been told at the Swan Lake Garden Centre, a plum should have another plum near by.  Also, as mine is a European plum, it should be another European plum, not an Asian one, which was what I originally wanted.  So I now have a Green Gage Plum on the north side of the house to mate with the Italian one on the south.  I also bought two more tall grasses to fill in the spaces left after I removed the dead cedars.  My hedge is no longer gap toothed, but it certainly isn’t a perfect set of dentures.  If it were teeth, its picture would qualify for a place in ‘The Big Book of British Smiles’ that frightened Lisa Simpson into going to the orthodontist.  Of the original 24 six foot cedars that I bought in May 2011, 10 are now glorious seven foot statuesque trees, 9 are about six foot and stunted or bent in one way or another and 2 have been replaced by grasses that should grow to about eight feet high and three wide.  The Green Gage Plum will eventually take up the place where 3 cedars died, side by side.

It’s been quiet in the hood this week, so I’ve spent a few evenings in the back yard watching a couple of robins teach their little ones how to listen for worms, or whatever they do.  There are only 2 little fluffy grey students.  It’s fun to sit quietly listening to the rustle of their tiny feet in the dry leaves and the evening song of one of the adults perched on a fence post overseeing the lesson.

Mom turned 92 on June 7.  She’s 2 days older than Prince Philip and about 2 years younger than Nelson Mandela.  She seems to be doing marginally better than either of them is at the moment, but she’s frail and still suffering from the pain of post herpetic neuralgia almost every day.   She and dad continue to do their best, but they ‘don’t get around much anymore’.  They have managed to go for two drives, one to their favorite breakfast place, Tim Horton’s and one to Willows Beach, but dad can’t go far.  In spite of the fact that they live on the first floor, there are 4 steps between him and the front door, so he has to go down the elevator to the underground parking and then walk from there to the street.  They were hoping to go across to the Oak Bay Beach Hotel for lunch one day, but he was too tired by the time he got up from the garage to carry on.  He had to sit on his walker and rest before returning to the apartment.  Their main source of entertainment this week has been the French Open tennis.