The view from my front yard


Yesterday, for the first time in a month, I didn't visit a hospital, didn't leave Belle River and didn't even drive the car. I spent the morning on my new porch reading a pulp fantasy (Exile's Return by Raymond Feist) and then took a long nap in the afternoon. The rest of the day was filled up with a walk over to the marina, followed by a bit of overdue housecleaning and in the evening a marathon viewing of the last four episodes of Boston Legal.

Mom and Jean both came home in the last week, each having suffered some complications during their hospitalizations. Jean had a quadruple bypass, not the triple originally planned, and then developed some infections during his recovery. Mom was supposed to be discharged two weeks after the change in her medications, but she surprised us by refusing a weekend pass, saying she wasn't ready. Eventually she admitted that her hallucinations had become more disturbing and she was having trouble getting to sleep. So a second antipsychotic was added to the new mix.

Eddie is still waiting for his surgery. It might be another month, even though we were first told it would happen in late March or early April. At least this will be a simpler operation than Jean's and it will take place in a Windsor hospital. Jean had to go to London and Mom to Chatham and between the two of them I put about 5,000 kilometres on the car in the past few weeks.

While I've been performing as the family chauffeur my landlord has engaged in a bit of landscaping. Not long ago the entrance to my flat looked like this:



I got home one evening to discover that Luc had constructed a front deck across the entire triplex:



Further examination revealed that the bare dirt had been covered by a layer of large stones. In fact over the next week five large piles of stones appeared, which were then distributed across the front and side yards. I joined my next door neighbours, Doug and Maureen, in helping out on a couple of mornings, shoveling stones into a wheel barrow which Luc then dumped and rearranged around the trees he had planted last fall, leaving room as well for the tulips which had unexpectedly emerged this spring. After our demonstration of middle aged vitality Luc hired some younger people to do the remainder of the heavy lifting.



The last touch was six cedar bushes.



So no lawnmowers for us.


Posted: Sun - May 28, 2006 at 01:51 PM          

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