Haven’t been around for a while and had even thought about giving up my plots.
Back in January my father in law had pneumonia which he didn’t seem to be able to shake. He was sent to a lung specialist and diagnosed with Pulmonary Fibrosis. He was doing grand and we even took him away at Easter. Just after Easter he got another bout of Pneumonia and things went down hill rapidly from there. By August he was on very high levels of oxygen 24 hours a day and not able to stand up without his oxygen levels dropping and collapsing. He was hospitalized again in early September and we were told that when he came out he would need 24 hour a day care and that all he would get from our health system was 21 hours a week so l made plans to give up plots and cancel holiday we had booked. We got a call from the hospital on a Friday morning back in September to say he was being discharged that day even though we had nothing organized, they discharged him at 4 pm on the Friday evening without even meeting with us to tell us what we needed to do for him when he got home. Within 4 hours he had gotten into respiratory distress had been rushed back to hospital and had died which was a huge shock to us all. We had only just gotten through funerals etc. when his sister died and we were off again. So the last two to three months have been a rollercoaster of hospitals, funerals and comings and goings.
Thankfully I hadn’t formally done anything about giving up the plots or cancelling the holiday. Myself and husband went off on the holiday last week and it was the best thing for us.
We went up to the plots yesterday expecting to find absolute devestation having not been up in nearly 3 months during which time we have had a number of storms but were pleasantly surprised. There was no real damage done. A lot of the crops had gone to seed but I should be able to rescue some. I cleared all the tomatoes, Cucumbers and the strawberries that had gone wild in the polytunnel. I managed to get some tomatoes and cucumbers that are usable. I had to dump the old strawberry plants as vine weevils got them but I managed to get 60+ baby plants off them which I potted up for next year. I then planted 100 onion sets and some garlic in the Polytunnel beds. OH cut back and disposed of any of the brassicas that were gone to seed, dug up some spuds and roots that were still good. Also picked some lovely Kale. The peas and beans I will collect on next visit to use as seed for next year.
It is amazing how much calmer both myself and OH are today and also how sore we are.