Still Kicking

Too old to stand, but not to eat!

Look at him go, folks! He may be thick with dementia and thin with kidney disease, but Nick’s appetite has yet to fail. So yes, he’s still hanging in there. 

Sorry for the long lapse of time since the last post. Every day begins with the thought, “Will this be his last day?” so it’s kinda been a long summer. He particularly likes to take a turn for the worse on Fridays, when he knows it’ll be harder to get the vet to drive up the mountain.

Twice he’s gone missing. One time, in the dark of night, after searching for him for a good 45 minutes, we found him close to a half-mile down the road, past the cabin behind us. He had walked past the end of the road and into the woods, down an embankment, and his hips collapsed and he couldn’t get up. Luckily he yelped a few times and Mason heard him. We’re incredibly lucky we found him before a coyote did. (We'd heard them yapping about 30 minutes earlier.) Since then, he doesn’t get too much unsupervised time outdoors.

He sleeps most the day, then paces the house at night. The kitchen floor is too slick for his wobbly hips, so we’ve put up a couple strips of blue painter’s tape, keeping him out. We sleep with pillows over our heads to drown out the click, click, click of his nails on the wood floor.

Oh dear, this is all more than you want to hear. But I must confess that it’s been a bit all-consuming.

Other news? The biggest update comes from Mason, who has begun digging and setting piers for the bunkhouse. Next week we order lumber from the lumber yard, so that’s incredibly exciting.

"Mortgage Lifter" tomatoes were prolific.

I’m back working at the garden nursery on weekends until November, designing yards and dragging hoses around. I do that at home, too. That bean arch Mason built me? Big success. Several of the tomato plants were 8-feet-tall. The potatoes are all ready to be pulled from the ground all winter. The pesto is in the freezer, ready for winter, too. I still have to cure the sweet potatoes and roast the peanuts.

We’re definitely ready for the cooler fall temps. 

We are never ready for winter. (Well, all the firewood has been laid in since Spring, so we've got that going for us.) 

Beans hanging from the bean arch.

The bean arch.