traveling, again...

My auntie in Valdosta will be having surgery this week, so I will be on the road again. Going down to south GA on Tuesday, and expect to be there at least a couple of days. I conclude from her past experiences that the average hospital stay following surgery is about two days, and think that is what you get because 72 hours of inpatient is all the insurance companies are willing to cover. Sad that we get the health care our providers decide we should have???

Please keep successful surgery and easy recovery in your prayers. I can't imagine being is such misery that you agree to let someone cut on you - and especially replace your parts with foreign objects - but I know it must be awful to be in constant pain, to the point that you would do most anything for relief. She lives alone, so I don't know what will happen with post-care, but am hoping that there are some options for rehab/therapeutic assistance that will ultimately provide her the level of mobility she is expecting/desires after getting a new joint.

a little traveling music, please...

In the past week, I have been to Chattanooga (twice) and Valdosta/Quitman. So much running up and down the road that the Mastercard people called to be sure that all those places where someone had bought gas on my card were really legit. And I honestly could not remember if I had been purchasing so much in all the places they thought I had been, so I had to keep punching buttons to track myself and find out where they thought I was! Needless to say: they were right, and I will eventually have to pay for all that gas I used in my nifty little Toyo, though I am pleased to report that a lot of the travels were under such conscientious driving conditions that I was getting about 47 mpg. The only way I feel I would have done better is by staying home, but that would mean I have not been places and seen people I wanted to spend time with... so there!

would you care for a blueberry muffin?

I went with friends up to pick blueberries one morning last week, got up early to drive up near Callaway Gardens, to the 'U-pick' patch and beat the heat. It was a remarkably cool morning, but had rained overnight, so we were thoroughly soaked from wet grass, and dripping limbs by the time we got done. I did not actually want any berries, but went to enjoy their company, and had a good time visiting as we plucked. I passed my fruit along to one of the friends, who had plans to turn her two gallons into jelly/jam.

Reminding me of going with one of my girls when she was very small on a mother-daughter excursion to Harris County for a berry-picking adventure. That was my second trip, and her first time to see blueberries 'in the wild' on the bush. We were instructed to wear belts, and given a plastic gallon jug, with a large hole cut into the side: to thread your belt through the handle on the jug and free up both hands for picking. So that is what I 'wore' when I went last week. I got some funny glances, but got lots of berries!

There are a couple of berry bushes growing in the 'no man's land' between two fences (which have a reputation for 'making good neighbors') that I have picked enough off already for adding to my yogurt, cold cereal, making a batch of muffins to share, and put a few in the freezer. (Which is why I was not interested in stockpiling berries from the U-pick farm, though those bushes were the thickest, most laden with berries I have ever witnessed! They could not hold their limbs up there were so many fat, ripe berries on each one. I picked almost exculsively on one bush and did not even begin to get all the ones that were ripe.)

Oddly: one of the two bushes in my side yard has been historically 'lazy', only marginally productive, but the other is so generous and a producer of such big fat juicy sweet berries, I continually forgive the parsimonious one, year after year. The 'experts' in the world of blueberries instruct to plant more than one variety, to have a crop over an extended period of weeks, (I have no idea what type/variety the ones here are), I wonder if it also has something to do with pollenization? S.i.L. says I should separate the young sprouts coming up from the 'muscle-bound' bush to create more of the one that loves to get all the attention when it is so productive by Independence Day. So maybe in the fall, when it is time to do transplants, I will be motivated to dig and re-plant to increase the crop for the future.

I've also been busily planting a variety of mystery perrenials. F. bought a 'mystery box' that was an end-of-the season bargain from an on-line nursery and gave me things I have never heard of before, and won't be able to i.d. when/if they grow. But they are all in the ground (except for strawberry plants I haven't figured out where to put), and some are looking pretty healthy. I'm determined to plant nothing but perrenials, and have tried to focus on things that the deer find unappealing - though I have discovered what the deer find distasteful, the big black nasty grasshoppers think delectable. So I water, spray, water, spray, stomp, stomp, water, spray, etc...