A Queer Mobile

A garden jewel

As the season races toward Fall, the garden is beginning to retreat. Our annuals are still ablaze with color, but most of the perennials are fading now. Except these: these are Toad Lillies (Tricyrtis sp.). They're called that because the jewel-like flowers are covered in small spots. These are my glories in the late summer and fall - they're beautiful, and they last for about three months.

What do 150 pears look like?

This is about a quarter of our haul off our pear tree!

Last year John surprised me by walking in with six perfect pears from our small tree - a Moonglow pear tree. They were marvelous, and I devoured them greedily.

We were cooking out in our new back patio and I casually picked a few ripe pears. John came over and we started picking more earnestly. By the time he finished, he had about one hundred fifty fruit in two buckets. I triaged them into various degrees of ripeness, and we've been contemplating what to do next. (I've been eating the best ones - they're incredible.)

John'll make his famous ginger-pear pie for the weekend, I know. I've been thinking about poaching a batch for later use. John's also got me considering making pear-sauce, or maybe canning pear butter.

That brings up apples. We have five apple trees and a crab apple tree. My friend Mary Taylor and I made twenty glasses of crab apple jelly, and I'm thinking about apple butter. I'll be busy this Labor Day weekend! The apples (and pears) are incredibly nice this year - what a change from last year, when a late frost nipped the apple buds and we got none at all.

Catching up on the NC trip

I've not written much about our trip to North Carolina other than about my father's injury. The morning before Dad fell, John and I walked a favorite trail of ours around Lake James, a North Carolina State Park. The trail winds through this lovely forest.

Dad continues to improve. He's in a rehab facility as his knee heals. In two weeks his orthopedic surgeon will take another film of the knee. If that looks good, then Dad can start to bend the knee and begin another level of physical therapy. Hopefully he'll head back to his home sometime in September.

John's shop recovery

Lots of good things have been happening for John, particularly money-wise. John received an artist relief grant from Legion Arts, a very active group of artists here in Cedar Rapids which was itself devastated by the flood. Legion Arts has been tireless in organizing to help the artist community here in Cedar Rapids, and we're very thankful for their flood relief efforts.

The Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce has been organizing small business grants and loans to businesses affected by the flood. To ease the paperwork burden, when John applied for his SBA disaster relief loan most of those forms also went to the Chamber. Just last week John received a very large award from the Chamber, structured part as an outright gift and part as a forgivable loan. If he stays in business here in Cedar Rapids for a three year period, the Chamber will forgive the loan in its entirety. Combined with the SBA loan he's already received, these new grants now completely make John's business whole money-wise. We thank the Chamber for their incredible efforts for small businesses affected by the flood.

John's been replacing power tools; we have a mountain of boxes around here, with some being pressed into service for work John's doing on the house. He's received word from his landlords that he'll most likely be able to get into his new space by the end of September.

My father falls and breaks his knee

John and I drove to Nebo, NC last Friday to hang out with my father and my sister's family. Jill, my sister,  and Carl, my brother-in-law, own a marvelous thirty acre place here. Dad lives in a trailer on their property.

Jill and Carl invited us along with Carl's mother and sister to a great cookout Saturday night. Right after dinner, my father fell while trying to sit down in a rickety folding chair. He hit his knee hard against the concrete, but John caught him as he fell and kept him from hurting anything else. His knee was clearly badly hurt. Dad's eighty-nine. We headed to the local ER to find out exactly what had happened.

About five hours later we knew he'd fractured his kneecap. He's been admitted to the hospital. By Sunday morning the orthopedic surgeon had a chance to look at the films. The two pieces of Dad's kneecap had separated by about a inch, and they wouldn't heal without surgery. The surgeon assembled a team to work on Dad on Sunday afternoon, and he was back in his room around dinnertime on Sunday.

John and I camped out with Dad Sunday night in his room. By this afternoon (Monday) he been up on and took a few steps. He'll need to spend about two months in a rehab facility as the knee heals.

New stone terrace - and shop updates

John's SBA loan was funded on Monday, so he's been out buying new tools and fixtures for the shop. His landlords have gotten all the permits they needed to repair their buildings, and they're working as fast as they can to get their tenants back in. They've not said anything, but I suspect John'll have some access to his new space in the next three or four weeks.

So what's he been doing? He's working hard on a new stone terrace in the back of the Annex. The dogs dug up the area in back very badly, so he filled in all the holes, put in sand, and laid pavers with stone blocks all around. (I did help haul about two tons of rock and sand to the back. Oof!)

Anyway, here's a video of the construction and the great results...