Memory and Dizziness

I found a whole batch of old photos I took.  They reminded me of how beautiful our landscaping was before old age really hampered me. Flowers everyplace. The rhododendrons have survived, most of them, and flourished; some peonies have survived total neglect.  Only a few rosebushes survived drought. Maybe three or four bushes out of 45. 

Until the mandated watering restriction was put in, the drive was gorgeously landscaped.  Now, when I try to plant, I run into inches of small stones and pebbles that I can’t ’remove. It’s just wild now.  Some weeds can grow in half an inch of soil.

I look at all those photos and I just can’t imagine how I had time and energy to plant all those flowers and then feed and weed them all. There were at least 9 flower beds I no longer maintain.  I maintain three pollinator beds, flowers in pots on the front porch or otherwise near the house and raised bed in front of the house. And of course, my herb and vegetable gardens. iI blows my mind how much landscaping Woody and I created and maintained for decades. We cut back very gradually until l my ankle injury in Detroit.

Sometimes I feel like a total anachronism, being a writer of books when fewer and fewer people read books at all. It’s depressing for me. Part of the dumbing down of America. 

 I had an unfortunate result of seeing my doctor on Wednesday. They kept trying to get wax out of my ears. They succeeded with the left, but couldn’t get embedded wax from the right. They kept using that powerful water gun in my left ear until it was to excruciatingly painful, I begged them to stop.  I woke the next morning with the room spinning horribly and enormous dizziness. I am slowly verily slowly recovering but there are setbacks with dizziness reappears. 

At least I am no longer a prisoner of the couch. Sleeping is still a problem, as lying down makes it much worse. I now can walk to my computer and the bathroom.    oday I am hoping I can go downstairs for the first time since the dizziness struck. I’m hoping that tomorrow, I can work with Nina as there is much to do. this is the first writing I’ve been able to do since dizziness began.  

Grump has enriched himself to the tune of $2 BILLION IN HIS 2ND term. What president was as corrupt and greedy?  Foreign leaders all sneer at him. He allies only with dictators. He despises the rest of us. He has gotten really wealthy by impoverishing us, gutting the government of everything, every program that benefits ordinary people, pardoned his favorite criminals, sent masked armed thugs into neighborhoods to break up families and kill Americans.  Deported huge numbers of working Americans who contributed to the economy he ravaged.

We know all this.  We witness or read about it daily. Still, it goes on and on and on. I’ve had to fight off outraged depression. Hard to hold on to hope.