Our little 5-in-1 dwarf plum tree is always the first to bloom, and inevitably it’s always the first victim of frost. I believe we planted that tree about 10 years ago and have never got fruit from it. One year we carefully covered it every night, and by beginning of May there was fruit set on it. We thought we were going to get plums, but around the middle of May we had a very hard frost that killed all our fruit and several roses. I don’t know how people who farmed this property early last century, before “global warming”, survived.

 

Diné and Rosencrantz were trying out kitty ear warmers for Laurie and Tristan this afternoon.  Rosencrantz got tried of me photographing him and covered his face. Kitties are an endless source of entertainment.

 

 

Tristan’s Valentine’s tarantula is a great model.

 

 

 

There was about a half inch of snow on the ground this morning. I went out to see if the crocus were opening in the morning sun, despite the snow, but they remained closed until almost noon. By the time they decided to open all the snow had melted; however, it was warm enough for the bees to be out working the crocus — the first bees I’d seen this season.

I got caught up on my French homework before I started cooking a big batch of NM gumbo this afternoon. While I was cooking t

he rice, browning the meats and thawing the vegetables, I managed to get a week ahead on my French homework. Now that’s what I call cooking!

The number system the French use is base 60, which is based on the Babylonian number system. There are no single names for the numbers 70, 80 and 90 in French. Seventy is soixante-dix (60+10), eighty is quatre-vingts (4×20), and ninety is quatre-vingts-dix (4×20+10). You add the numbers 10 through 19 to 60 to get from 70 to 79, then you add the numbers 1 through 9 to 4×20 to get from 80 to 89 and finally you add 10 through 19 to 4×20 to get from 90 to 99. One-hundred is “cent”.  The numbers make sense seeing them on paper, but listening to people rattle off numbers in the exercises and trying to write them down made my head spin.

Stretch was laying on the window sill sunning himself this afternoon. I went out to see if there was water in the ditch and talked to one of our neighbors for a few minutes, then when I came back inside Stretch was sitting on the window sill with the strong light shining through the window almost env

eloping him.

 

 

 

 

Talk about antiquated: daylight savings time should be abolished. Governments need to let us leave our clocks set on standard or DST and then leave us be. In the 21st Century there is no need to be changing our clocks every spring and fall.

I am really worn out after cleaning the house, washing the rugs, pruning the fruit trees, adding a rounded edge to Laurie’s study desk, doing 3 weeks of French homework (I’m still 3 weeks behind), and buying ingredients to make a pot of my NM gumbo. Losing an hour of sleep tonight will not help me recover.

The sky was overcast all day, which was nice for pruning trees, but it made the light flat for photographs. Thus I used HDR for the photos today. HDR is high dynamic range imaging where you take at least 3 exposures (under exposed, properly exposed and over exposed) and merge the images to create a more dynamic range in the image.

The orchids that surround my computer are in various states of being. One has almost completely faded with one dried flower hanging on. The flowers have all turned yellow and brown on another one, while the other three orchids are still in full bloom. The cut flowers we got about three weeks ago are slowly fading, but still looking good enough to come out nicely in B&W.

 

Stretch knows what to do on a cold, windy day — curl up on a shelf with math books.  The forecast was for snow today, and tomorrow. I didn’t see any snow today, but there was plenty of wind . We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

As the moon rose over the mountains while we were on our way home tonight, we noticed the details were almost completely obscured by dust that fills the air from the strong winds that blew all day. A woman who checked my receipt on our way out of Costco asked if I had gotten any good pictures today. I thought for a second and told her I hadn’t done any photos yet today.  After we got home, and unloaded everything from the car, I went out and photographed the moon as a cloud was blowing by. There was still a lot of dust in the air creating a nice glow around the moon.

I was awakened by the glow from the pending sunrise, and ran out and got it before it faded.  I had my 3 month check up today, which included blood work and my monthly port flush. A new nurse was learning how to access ports, and I allowed her to do the port draw and flush on me as part of her training. She is the 5th trainee to work on me so far; however, she was the first to miss one of my ports and skewer me.  Laurie said I can’t really complain, however, since I have poked a needle through Stretch’s skin and run solution all over Stretch and the counter.

All my blood work was normal, and the doctor couldn’t feel any lumps or other abnormalities, but since I still have a lot of fatigue, have lost a lot of strength, etc., she decided to check my thyroid and testosterone since chemo tends to wipe out both; therefore, I had to have more blood drawn — I had them draw it from my arm, because I didn’t want my port poked again.

We scheduled a PET scan for June 21st, which will be 2 years since I became one of Dr Marshall’s patients. I look forward to celebrating solstice with a good PET scan. Dr. Marshall said after two years, the chance of the cancer recurring goes way down.

 

This has been a “Garfield Monday”  — new hard drives didn’t work, new clothes didn’t fit, missing glasses, spilled coffee, no c-cell batteries, noise on a recording, and so on — everything seemed to be against us today.