Feeling Better + Blueberries

I can blame some of it on the rotten colds we brought back from California. We were coughing and wheezing for a week, then bone-tired for another. So I’m sure a lot of our crabbiness was due to feeling lousy. Some. However, more than half was from my gradually loosing my ability to be patient, and Grant’s increasingly being annoying. Or perhaps he hasn’t changed, and I’ve just lost way more patience than I’d thought. Plus, I’m feeling so isolated and lonely, which is realistic, because I am isolated and lonely. After living in Central Florida almost 4 years, we are making no friends, barely any acquaintances, and I’m discouraged about that ever happening. This is an insulated community. Nice people, but people who have lived here all their lives. People whose children and grandchildren live here. They have their tribes.

In any case, a knockdown drag-out fight after what one would consider a small snippy exchange, but what was probably a cover for all the pent up emotions we both have been tamping down. Words said, tears shed, threats made, cold shoulders. All the techniques we knew were wrong displayed. After several days of feeling devastated, we have climbed out of our dispare and are back on the same team. I’ve actually experienced a couple of frissons of joy, something I haven’t felt for way too long. Grant spoke, via tele-med, to a therapist, who immediately prescribed a round of Zoloft. Even though I doubt its effects have kicked in, he seems more present. 

To that end, we’ve been working together in the garden. I gave up on having the blackberries against our southern neighbor’s white plastic fence. The plants got no, absolutely no, sun in the winter when the sun is lower in the sky. My idea of reflecting light via hubcaps I found and spray painted shiny silver was a no op. Starting in mid-April the bed gets full afternoon sun. So far, only lirope has survived.

Saturday, we moved the blackberries over to one of the vegetable beds. I’m quitting on the idea of beans and cabbages. Now it’s blackberries. While Grant dug holes and pounded stakes in for the trellis, I weeded another bed. I found some volunteer dill plants which I potted up. I also put some of the oregano in pots and composted the rest. 

Then, Monday, after exercising with Denny, we drove to Lucas Nursery and bought 3 blueberry plants plus the soil for the verticale planter I gave Grant for Christmas. Tuesday, he planted the blueberries in the bed I’d prepared, while I weeded the westernmost bed and planted our sweet potatoes there.

I’ve sprouted some eggplant seeds on paper towels in a plastic tray. If I manage to grow a couple of plants, they will go in our fourth bed. Done. We are going to try bananas along the fence. Maybe they will get tall enough to get light during the winter.

But all that gardening is not the important thing. It’s how much Grant and I have enjoyed doing it together. The best I’ve felt in a long time. We’re still wandering alone, as a couple, in the wilderness of Windermere, however, it’s really nice to have each other to wander with.