leatherman's log   June 2010 Week One |   Week Two |   Week Three |   Week Four

Week One: Omigoodness! After all my timely updates last month, I've been very slack this month. This first update isn't coming until nearly the end of the month. But I do have an excuse: there wasn't a lot that happened - and that was good!     It rained some. It was hot (in the 90's) and sunny the rest of the time. The garden continued to grow and it's begun to produce vegetables. Most of the flowers around the yard have bloomed now, though there are still a scattering of flowers here and there. I spent a lot of time in the pool and worked on a project or two. Around the Yard Everything is growing well in the garden! There aren't as many flowers blooming around in the yards as there was earlier in the spring. However, there are some dashes of color here and there. These lilies have opened up to fill in the area where the irises were blooming earlier in the season. I'm a little troubled by the morning glories. While they have produced a lot of vines and climbed up the trellis well, I was afraid they weren't going to bloom. Finally, one or two scattered blooms have appeared. Since these were seeds I brought from my Northern morning glories perhaps they just aren't happy with the heat. After another afternoon thunderstorm, I went out to catch a picture of this beautiful yellow flower; but I couldn't get the picture to not be washed out. Turning around I saw the reason. The backside of the storm clouds were being lit by the setting sun and the reflected light was very bright. Way back in the woods, far down from behind the back of the house, our "gulley" was a "creek" for a short time as the rain water drained off

Week Two: The Yard The morning glories still aren't doing to well producing flowers; but every few morning, I wake up to a few blossoms. At least the heavy vines do provide a bit of shade in the late afternoons when the sun is beating on this side of the house. The morning glories in my Coke-bottle planter aren't doing much better. Sure there have been some flowers; but the heat each day wilts the plants, so they are having a hard time too. These morning glories originally started from a pack of seeds that I got probably 15 years ago when I first planted them at my 14th street house. Each year, I've saved seeds and replanted them the following year wherever I lived. Perhaps these seeds are just too "Yankee-fied" and it'll take them a year or two to adapt to the hot summers here in South Carolina. The white radishes never produced any radishes; but now they have some very pretty purple flowers. You'd think the cosmos that love the heat would be doing great; but no such luck. They are putting out a few flowers but as you can see they aren't growing anywhere near as well as they would have been doing by this time of year back up in Ohio. However, even though I planted them very late, and it's only their first year, the hollyhocks aren't far behind were they would have been in June in Ohio. The grass in the back of the dogz yard is doing well, even if it does still have a few bare spots. Hopefully, I'll be able to fix that problem up with some more grass seed this fall and next Spring. Some of the Mexican garden is doing well, and some of it, not so well. A few cacti in the pots have died; but most of the newly planted stuff in the front portion are doing well. The Garden The cantaloupe plants really took off and started to grow out this week. Well, until they started growing cucumber. Although Lowe's had them marked as cantaloupe plants, it seems that they were actually short cucumbers.   The sunflowers are beginning to bloom, and these are just any old sunflowers. These are a variation of the Lemon Queen Sunflowers. Of average height, the plants put out flowers with a brown center surrounded by chiffon-yellow colored petals. I finally just gave up on the broccoli plants. The secondary heads all quickly went to flower too. But at least, I understand what the problems were. One were the bugs, so next year, I will dust for pests sooner. Two, was the heat. I believe if I mulch the base of the plants, I can keep them cool and wet enough next week. Plus I want to plant more plants, and stagger the plantings a few weeks apart so that we can have more broccoli throughout the produce season.   The squash plants are doing well and, unlike the zucchini, are producing fruit now.   The cilantro are producing flowers (when it goes to seed, it will be coriander) along with the lemon balm and the dill. A New Project - A New Deck And what would late Spring be without a project? LOL So the latest project is building a small deck out by the pool. Using bricks, landscaping timbers, and some 1x6 pine boards, we built the new deck as an expansion off the "work deck" out by the sheds. MouseOver GBS Special   Cutting only a few boards, it took no time to start screwing everything together and get the deck building underway.     It took a few days to completely finish the deck. First, I ran out of screws. Then we decided we could easily and cheaply extend the deck another couple of feet. The Big Back Yard

Week Three: Summer Arrives If a picture says a 1,000 words, then here are 7,000 words on how much I'm enjoying the beginning of Summer         But even as I enjoy the pool, the world continues twirling along. I got several phone calls while outside. Of course, I didn't have paper or pen with me, so I utilized the next best items - a pencil and a block of wood. A Mini-Project It only took an hour to cut up some left over lattice lying around to fence in the irises by the pool. An Unexpected Project - Pears on the Ground One evening, Mom, Dennis and I took a trip up to the local Sonic for sundaes. The diner was running a special promotion to assist the local Girl Scouts raising some funds for camp. Since two of my nieces were involved, it was a no-brainer for us to get to spend some time with the girls and to help them out.   After we got back home, and I stepped out on my back porch with the dogz, I realized something was very different. A huge branch of one of the pear trees had snapped and crashed across the shrubs! Over-loaded with pears the branch couldn't hold the weight any longer. Mom and I snipped, clipped and dragged the branches out of the way as the sun set. The following day, I got out there with the rake and chipper. Shredding not only the soft-wood branches but also the leaves and the pears, I was able to nearly double the size of my compost pile when I was finished chipping everything up. Climbing back into the tear, I snipped out a few smaller branches and pulled off some pears, hoping to lighten the burden so none of the other branches snap. Hopefully, we should be able to still harvest a bunch of pears. This Fall, I'll realize have to get into these trees and prune them back, so it's easier to reach the fruit and less likely for any more branches to snap.

Week Four: The BEST News in Twenty Years! I had lab work done this past week and wasn't going to see the doc to get results until next week. However, I've been having a bad problem with my shoulder and went in to see the nurse practitioner today.   The problem actually started back when I was a kid. At 14, a doctor had diagnosed the problem as bursitis. Fortunately, it usually didn't give me much grief. Except for any day that was cool and wet and rainy - which was a lot of days in Fall and Spring up in Ohio. Usually, it would get so bad that I would end up unable to turn my head to the right for a few weeks.   For some reason, I didn't have any problems for the last two years. It's amazing how many of my health issues like the shoulder and the barfing quit when Jim got sick and haven't returned. Why even my HIV numbers  has stayed stable during this time period! However, it's come back with a vengeance now. Several times it has hurt so bad that it's has literally woken me up crying about how bad it hurt. Since it could be bursitis, or arthritis, or avascular necrosis (eek! an HIV-related degenerative bone illness), we going to start to figure it out with an x-ray scheduled on Friday. For the time being, I've got some pain meds to help.   But speaking about my HIV numbers, that's where the GOOD news comes into play. Surprisingly, when I saw the nurse my lab work was already back and boy was it surprising! These numbers are the best I've had in two decades. Yessiree , I've hit over 300 for a third time in all these years! Still holding with an undetectable viral load, instead of the normal 250-ish cd4 count, I beat the old record of 311 with an all-time high of 318! WooHoo! Some possible factors to this improvement could be that I haven't smoked cigarettes in over 1 year and 150 days. I also changed Videx EC and Viread HIV medications out for Truvada back in March.   Historically though, looking at my t-cell graph, the next point to plot should either be of an insignificant change or should fall lower; but don't mistake that for negativity. I haven't been in a hospital in 13 years and have been by just fine with 250-ish t-cells for 6-ish years so even if my next counts are back below 300, I won't be sad, nor will I be surprised. I'm just a realist and my graphing says that the next count is a drop. However, my case manager can attest that I "predicted" this current lab work to come in at 247 or 267, which means I was off by at least 51 t-cells, so what do I know.   Unlike any of the ups-an-downs in my t-cell chart, my viral load chart is staying very stable. Look at how pretty that line has straightened out down there at "Undetectable" for so long. WooHoo!   Here is how the charts are looking merged together with the latest data. I feel obligated to point out the wonderful change in my numbers and this chart is, more than any med change or life-style change like stopping smoking, it's all become of how much my Jim meant to me and how much he loved me.

Updated: leatherman @reigningpages.com