Blue's Garden

So I'm currently down with a strained Achilles tendon. I strained it last Monday, managed to run on Wednesday, and haven't been able to since. This is part of what was making me so cranky at the end of last week, particularly after I planted some containers on Thursday and ended up hurting all over as well as limping around. I tried running on Saturday and, quite literally, couldn't make even one stride, so I've accepted that I just have to let it heal and then play catch-up.

By 'letting it heal' I meant 'no running', but today I'm in bed thanks to a trip to the grocery store and a very hot afternoon of cooking yesterday. I'm quite used to my feet hurting in the summer time, regardless of my footwear - my legs/feet and standing have always been a problem - and I'd already limped all around the grocery store, but by the time I was halfway through what I planned on cooking/baking, I realized that everything was hurting more than usual and my ankle had swollen up. This probably didn't aid the healing process. Whoops? By then it was 9pm and the other things could wait, so I threw in the towel, showered, and crawled into bed with an ice pack, co-opting D's two pillows to prop up my ankle.

Another item entry in Blue's Cranky Week was discovering that my tomato plants had contracted a virus, thanks to the excessively wet spring and apparently brought in by the tomato plant I didn't mean to buy. Long story short, I wasn't entirely sure, at first, what the problem was and so delayed treatment until Sunday. I was hoping it was fish fertilizer left on the leaves and possibly burning them a bit (it looked like sunburnt leaves more than anything) but thought that if it were a virus, then they were goners. They're really beautiful plants this year, and the potential loss was considerably more heartbreaking than losing twice as many to drowning last year.

Sunday, I finally realized that it could well be a fungus, not a virus, and that it could potentially be treated with copper fungicide along with removing the infected parts of each plant (with sterilization procedures between each one, to avoid spreading it). So I broke out the supplies and set about trying to salvage things. They're now considerably less bushy, consisting mainly of a few branches at the top and a sturdy stem, but they seem to be holding their own. I'll cover what I did in more detail in another post, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

( More Gardening Stuff )

I went to town yesterday to the grocery store for the first time in quite a while. Once I made it home, I drug the groceries inside, put the cold stuff away, changed around my clothes and added a layer, loaded the pups in the car, and went down to Mother-in-Law's for a walk in the woods.

This seemed like a good idea at the time. I took the camera, River could use the exercise, etc.

First of all, it's the dead of winter with a negative temperature wind chill, so I was wearing insulated bibs over jeans and turtleneck with a wool jacket and another corduroy jacket on top of that. I had on two pairs of socks, neoprene and rubber chore boots, a knit cap, and leather gloves. I was not cold! Unfortunately, I was not flexible either and it all made walking anywhere a bit tiring let alone over the hills and valleys of the field before we even made it to the woods. Jack promptly disappeared and I didn't see him again until we arrived back at the house - I think when I kept beeping him, that's where he went looking for me. River was with me though and we headed into the woods, along the trail where the snowmobiles had beat it down into something reasonable to walk on. All was well until we made it to neighbors paint ball set-up and I had the bright idea to go off the path, which didn't go over to the actual town set-up, and check things out over there.

Oh my god.

Fifty yards of fording through knee deep snow later, I thought I was dying. I stopped three times in the process just to catch my breath and by then I was screwed - the path was pretty much at least fifty yards away in any direction. I sat down on the porch of one of the buildings to catch my breath which, um, took a while. Meanwhile, River rustled up a bunny and chased it around (or tried, the bunny was having none of that nonsense today and ran straight to one of its bolt holes, leaving River sniffing in the snow behind it.)

Forging a trail back to the path was just as much fun as I expected. Oh sure, I could have stepped in my own footprints and maybe had it a bit easier, but that didn't occur to me until later; I was trying to make the whole trip shorter, so I went out the other side in order to pick up the path at a different spot. At one point I slipped down onto my knees (nicely cushioned by the snow at least) and decided to just stay there for a minute because down was good, very good. Talk about unintended exercise. Obviously, I survived, but my hips and lungs were screaming by the time I made it back to the car, an hour after we set out - my lungs especially from all the heavy breathing in the very cold air.

(Jack: *comes running from the house*
Blue: "There you are, buddy!" *wheeze* "I kept beeping you - you missed the whole adventure! There was even a bunny."
Jack: "OMG THERE YOU ARE I LOOKED EVERYWHERE WHERE WERE YOU?! Wait, bunny? THERE WAS A BUNNY?!"
River: *smug*)

Back home, I changed into pajamas, drank a bottle of water, and crawled into bed. As usual after exposure to the cold, I went from hot to warm to cold bits mixed with mostly feverish all over. So after a hot bath and crawling back in bed for a nap, my hips were only just achy although I'm paying a bit more for it today.

Oh, and River? The one who needs exercise? Ran circles around me and was never even out of breath. Seriously. I didn't even take that many pictures, mostly because there simply wasn't much to take pictures of - no ice, no critters, no birds, etc. *sigh* Of course, towards the end, I was concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other and wondering where the hell Jack was, so photography was the least of my concerns.

I've since decided that I should take up running since it can't possibly be any worse that what I did to myself yesterday.

( Photographic Evidence, Such As It Is )