We Skipped Spring!

Yikes!  Mother Nature is up to her tricks again,  and  has decided we should skip spring for awhile. The temperature hit 89ºF today.  I finally broke down and turned on the air conditioner when the inside temperature hit 84. I  don't do heat well.  Needless to say, I didn't get as much done outside as I'd hoped, either.

I did supervise Mr. G as he trimmed and thinned out some some shrubs in the back yard. He was  trimming the butterfly bush when he realized all the branches were  dead- they just broke off.  Like the poor rhododendron in the front yard,  the butterfly bush  is  another victim of last summer's drought and  the accompanying water restrictions we were under.

I wonder if we'll have the same situation this summer.  It makes me wonder whether it's wise to  plant a garden. But since I've already started seeds,  I may as well plant and hope for the best. To that end I did manage to get some more seedlings  potted up into individual containers as they wait for  time to be planted out permanently in the garden or in earth boxes.

The lettuce is slowly  beginning to look like lettuce, or  miniature lettuce- this time last year I was already harvesting some leaves, so I'm hoping it goes into a growth spurt before hot weather sets in permanently.

Tomorrow is chemo treatment day so I won't be doing any gardening, or much else, actually,   for the next day or so.  I've been on the irinotecan/cetuximab regimen for almost a year now; this will be my  nineteenth  treatment, and despite the  dry, flaky, itchy skin, the cracks that develop on my fingertips and feet, the fingernails  that tear, the   swollen  toenail beds and ingrown toenails, I've actually tolerated  it  pretty well so far. I'm fortunate not  to have suffered some of the really nasty, pustular  skin eruptions that  many  patients get.  I had the  acne like rash  at the beginning of treatment, but   that subsided after a few treatments, thank goodness.  At least I now have  very long, luxurious eyelashes-they are so long that I have to use eyelash curlers to keep them from  brushing against my glasses. And the hair on my head- that's strange.   It has grown in  all straight and coarse in the front and wavy in the back.  I have no idea   what do do with wavy hair- it seems to have a mind of its own and does what it pleases regardless of what I want it to do.  Sort of like Mother Nature  and  Mr. G 😉