While I’ve composed several posts in my head out running recently, I’m saving my typing muscles for the paper I’m writing. My word count is creeping up, and I’m confident I’ll meet my deadline with time to spare for some serious editing and revising, but all the usual suspects are hurting — back, elbow, wrist, and most worrisome, shoulder. I tend to get a carpal-tunnel, non-tennis-elbow thing going when I spend too much time at the keyboard and sometimes shoulder involvement. The latter can take a while to bounce back from, so I’m trying to ration out keyboard and mouse minutes.
If you want some wise and entertaining words, I highly recommend this post on what we’ve learned by “a certain age.”
But while I have few words of my own to offer you today, I brought my camera out for a walk with me and collected some photos to share over the next few days.
First up, though, are the ones from just outside the door, where there are signs of incipient spring despite the forecaster’s promise that the next few days will see sub-zero (Celsius) temperatures.
And even last year’s leftover efflorescence looks glorious in the winter sunshine (its swan song, in fact, as Pater cut it all down just after I took its photo).
And this Mahonia japonica — buttery colour and delicious fragrance from late November to mid February. What a return on fifteen or twenty dollars spent ten years ago!
I have more images of winter-flowering gardens coming up tomorrow. ‘ til then . . . enjoy the end of your weekend, whatever your weather. . .
I always look forward to your garden photos.
Take care of those symptoms. I had such an awful time myself recovering from severe tendinitis in both hands and forearms from years of keyboarding. It took seven years of rest to recover, and I still don't have the former, full use of my hands and wrists.
what hopeful photos. I am reminded that we still need to clear out our grasses from last year…to make way for the new. Care for yourself. The hours in front of a computer are hardest on my eyes.
Cute post, love the sprouts in early morning, and my hands and arms burned all last night:(. I should follow your lead.
I am yearning for spring…it's sunny today,
hooray!
The snowdrops are blooming and many bulbs are popping up through the soil so it shouldn't be long now.
Pictures are worth a thousand words…
are you putting some of them in your paper ? 🙂
I hope that you can continue to write without too much discomfort. Sometimes writing can be so unpleasant for the body. Can you get a massage, perhaps?
Everything is dead here. You live in a place that pulses through every season. Amazing. (Have you always lived in BC?)
And that post you linked to is v. true. I'm only 40 and I have already figured out a bunch of that stuff! 🙂
Thanks, Susan, for the cautionary note . . . I'm sorry to hear about your hand and arm problems.
Terri: I can never bear to cut down the grasses in the fall when they're so dramatic, and then it's winter and it's cold and wet, and then suddenly it's January and they're still here . . . luckily, come a sunny day and my husband gets energetic with the pruning shears, looking for a target . . .
LPC: ooh, I hope your hands and arms recover — don't want you to miss any posts (I'm being selfish)
Hostess: Those crocuses . . . and I've got some mini irises not too far behind those . . .
K: Isn't that a great post? I think those women are mid-to-late 40s, probably closer to your age than mine, but they've really identified a few compensations for aging. . .
Yes, we've always (both of us) lived on the Coast, although we shook things up a little by moving to the north Coast (Prince Rupert) for seven years and by settling on the Island when we came back rather than on the Lower Mainland. Lotusland, though, all of it . . .
Continued good luck with pacing yourself whilst writing Mater Рas a runner you'll know very well to listen to your body! Loved your Herm̬s watch in the last post, just couldn't comment, being comotose in bed with flu the last few days! Your garden looks like it's wakening up Рand we just got a small dump of snow! Oh well, spring will come soon enough. P
You are stoic to write so much but with such patience; I am someone who ploughs through rather than paces, hence the shocking grammar! I too have been uplifted by the bright yellow blossom on the Mahonia and some spring bulbs poking through, plus catkins which are now dangling freely all serves to let me know that at some point I may see daylight again!
It's good to be reminded that while we are sweltering in humid, 35+ days, others are awaiting the arrival of warmer weather! I love your garden photos.
Funny… did not enjoy that post you linked to, beginning with "Reason's". Maybe too because my friends do not blather on about their child's admission to Oxford at our dinner parties. Perhaps the comments are of a different tone, but I bailed.
And my word verification is, I swear, chipper.
Tiffany: 35+ is always too hot for me, doubly so if there's high humidity, but right now, it's lovely to imagine some of that heat. . . glad you like the garden shots.
Duchesse: Well, yes, the — let's be kind and call it a typo — error in the post's title would bother me if I hadn't turned that sensor switch off in desperation — Even otherwise good writers, too many who should know better, seem to rely on my students' method of sprinkling apostrophes indiscriminately among the "s's" with no distinction between plural and possessive.
And I agree that many dinner parties, if one has the right friends, can be absolutely joy. But I find, as the writer of that post does, that more often than not, I'm just as happy staying home with a good book and my husband's company. I didn't know this in my 20s — of course, part of this is probably just rationalization for not having the energy to go out anymore!
Patricia: Sorry you're not well and hope you mend quickly (altho' maybe nurse the recovery an extra day or two in bed with a book . . .) sorry to be rubbing spring flowers in your face when you're dealing with fresh snow . . .
Alison: I have catkins photos in the roster — I love them! They so nurture my hopes for spring, it's coming, right?
Oh, a promise of spring when it seems so distant here. The world is white once again and the accumulated snow on the ground is deeper than my over-the-knee boots. Thank you.
Mardel: I'm glad you appreciate my intent — I always worry that I might seem to be gloating over our West Coast good luck when all I want to do is share some of it. . . I wouldn't dare gloat, as we often get a comeuppance of snow in February . . .