12 Oakdale

My July schedule is up at 5:30ish, pee, start coffee, feed cat, exercise, then turn on the Tour de France. Broadcast starts at 6:30. I watch for a couple of hours, eating breakfast while I sit, then out to work in yard until it rains, or I get too hot.  I am finishing the bed by the boathouse from the path over to the rose by Nancy’s fence. The area had already been cleared for a squash bed last year, abandoned until the guys were finished with the deck. I had to pull weeds and all the branches we’d tossed in when we removed the Brazilian pepper from the canal’s edge. I put down new cardboard which Grant covered with the oldest compost we had. Now I’ve planted 5 dwarf Fakahatchee grass (Tripsacum floridanum)  about 18” away from the boathouse fence. I hope their roots will grow deep enough to hold any dirt that would like to wash away. There was one more obvious hole at the deck edge, so Grant dug in some of the leftover tongue and groove boards to fill it.  In front, I l...

We (I) decided we will ride our bikes once a week for the next 3 months. Then we would evaluate our future bike needs. I’m not ready to quit riding, but I am very leery of having a fall. I’m not sure whether Grant feels he can ride an upright bike anymore either. Only one way to find out. So Wednesday is Bike Day. Our first ride was along the West Orange Trail from Chapin Station north 4 miles to Ingram Outpost and back. After dropping Clara off at school, we drove over to our starting point, Grant offloaded the bikes, we went to the bathroom and rode away. At 9:00, there were few people, either bikers or walkers, to impede our unsteady riding. It is still cool enough for me to wear a long-sleeved bike shirt with a t-shirt over it.  By the time we got to our endpoint, it was sunny but still comfortable. We ate our tangerines and headed back. Mission accomplished. We both felt fairly comfortable in the saddle. This week, Grant suggested we start at Magnolia Park and ride along Lake ...

February 18th. We were on the road bikes again, for the first time, 8 months after his accident. Grant has decided no more riding on roads for him, so I suggested we go to Orlando Wetland Park. He had never been there. From my one birding trip there, I remembered the roads being hard packed sand and shell. That must have been somewhere else, because we toughed out the four mile sandy loop around Lake Stacey and vowed never again. Besides, I can’t bike and bird at the same time. This is a place to walk or take the trams since they are running again. Ospreys, coots, blue winged teals, herons and egrets, roseate spoonbills, one Royal tern. I heard 2 barred owls calling, and Grant was strafed by a red shouldered hawk. Yellow-rumped warblers and catbirds near the entrance, a red bellied woodpecker heard but not seen. We will be back.  February 25th. Our second ride, from Green Springs to Gemini Springs was just a little over 9 miles round trip, but my legs and butt were sore the next da...

  As if we needed more rain, tropical storm Elsa went over Windermere during the early morning. Rain is supposed to fall all day. The Cuban tree frogs are croaking away. I had planned to buy bagels from Jeff’s Bagel Run, a new shop a couple of miles away in Ocoee. From a home business started from their kitchen in August, 2019, the owners have set up a brick and mortar shop which claims to have New York style bagels. They sell out by 9:00 each morning which either means the bagels are good, or locals don’t know any better. The only good bagels we’ve had south of NYC is at Sage Deli in Hallandale, which brought their oven, brick by brick, from their northern location. Unless the rain let’s up in the next hour, I’ll put off our test to another day. Grant ending up spending 36 hours in ER while cat scans were done and teams of trauma, neuro, and cardio doctors conferred. A second scan showed his subdural hematoma had not grown, but all agreed he should be admitted as soon as a bed wer...

In the rain this morning, Grant fell off his bike and hit his head. A neighbor called me, and someone called 911. It was just 5 minutes from our house. I think he slipped on the painted white line at the edge of the road, but he didn’t remember anything until the paramedics had him standing and getting ready to go to the emergency room. When I got there, he seemed dazed. He knew his name, but gave our Fort Lauderdale address for where he lived. Very scary. An hour later, at Orlando Regional Hospital, he was back to speed. A cat scan show a 3 millimeter subdural hematoma, so he has to stay until that gets resolved. It also showed no damage to spine or joints, so his rib, shoulder, and hip pains are miserable but superficial. His scraped elbow and knees got cleaned and bandaged: the gash in his forehead, I guess from his helmet which broke in the fall, got sutured.  The big deal is that he’s on blood thinners. The neurosurgeons want to reverse them to prevent any more bleeding. That ...