97 years

 

97 years is a long time to grace this earth.

Last Saturday, my mom  died a few days after her 97th birthday. I am in quarantine because she died of Covid, although mercifully she was not in distress and died peacefully. This is the view outside the bedroom window where I am quarantining. 

Prose Poem Story

 In this time of lockdown, I am trying to keep busy with some things I can do at home. Recently I have been working on some short fiction. There are a number of sites that publish very short fiction but the one I have settled on for now is Friday Flash Fiction based in Edinburgh. It takes stories of 75-100 words. It does have a category for stories up to 500 words and for poems but I am concentrating on the 100 words stories. It's bit like writing poetry hence the title for this post. I am aiming for one a week as they publish every Friday. Here is one I submitted a little while ago.

"Country Living

Here was John’s chance to get out of the city. His boss was making distance work permanent.

 

John’s budget was limited but the small town had very affordable housing prices. He bought a quaint older house and moved in.

 

All summer he fished in the nearby crystal clear lake. At night, the stars were spectacular. Every day he heard beautiful new bird songs. He even once saw a bear. He made new friends and hosted relaxing beer-infused barbecues. It was fantastic.

 

On October  15^th winter began with ten inches of snow. John sold his house on November  30^th."

I had commenters from Australia who totally didn't get it but I think anyone from a northern clime will have met a John or two.

I hope you are finding ways to keep busy at home.  

Keep well.

Salvaging my Poinsettia

The poinsettia I bought at Christmas quickly lost a lot of leaves and was looking quite pathetic.  I think it was over watered at the store plus moving from greenhouse, to store, to home is always stressful for a plant. I pretty much ignored it but finally one day, I cleaned off the dead leaves and had a better look at it.  I trimmed off the stems that had soggy ends. It had two stems that were still healthy with some red bracts and flowers so I thought I would try to revitalize the plant.

I kept it on the dry side and put a few granules of slow release fertilizer on the soil, and soon some new growth started to come. Even some new red bracts grew.

Where I had trimmed the stems, new leaves are shooting, and all the nodes along the bare stems are also started to grow leaves. I have it near a south facing window but set back about a foot so it doesn't get a chill at night. I'm feeling optimistic about it especially as the days are slowly getting longer.

Next summer if it is still chugging along, I will put it outside where it will get the morning sun. If I am organized enough, next fall I will try to trigger the blooms by putting it darkness for 16 hrs. a day for a month or so.

The Greek oregano that I planted is surviving as well as the basil. I think I am past the damping off stage so unless I totally mess up the watering, I should have some tasty herbs in a few months.

I hope you are all keeping well,  and enjoying perusing some colourful seed catalogues.