This summer since July 1 we both have either West Nile Virus or Lyme Disease or something else spread by insects which causes a bullseye rash and flu-like symptoms and lasts over a month (headache every day) if you have reduced immune system memory following chemotherapy, or five days otherwise. I still have occasional headache and runny eye. Test results will come back in two weeks for Lyme (which would need to be treated with 2 months antibiotics to avoid a chronic case) and three months for West Nile.
We have not been working much on the house but the garden is getting more care than usual, after a long cold winter .
In May and June we were swamped with self-sowed mustard greens (also reds) which we gave to all the neighbors and the postal carrier, and froze for the next few years. The groundhogs (which Jim has been trapping, along with raccoons, a skunk, a few squirrels and an opossum) ate all the lettuce, peas, and kale, and then the chickpea flowers and the soybeans, but did not touch the mustard grens.
Here is the garden in July:
squash in foreground
tomatoes and beans
beans and peas
Jim made super-duper trellises out of used plumbing pipe.
New plants this year are zucchini, pattipan, green and striped acorn, butternut, and two colors of cabocha squash, fava beans and black gram, and melokhiya (greens).
Some new friends from Beijing came for used bikes and stayed to visit and help in the garden. They took photos. August 12 2007
Sky and Jade helping move chunks of
concrete to use in building the wall, taken with their camera and
my camera
Jade brought her friend Lijun to get a bike and computer for his daughter
Hilda (English name) which Jim delivered on his
bike trailer
Jim and Sindi on the front porch with nearly-ripe grapes (which the opossums are now knocking down)
Sky, Jim and Sindi in front of Green Dent Corn, near the playhouse, with kale and beans to the left.
Jade, Jim and Sindi near two trellises of pole beans (Cherokee Trail of Tears and Tucomares Chocolate Runner) with the pawpaw nursery in back.
Jim and Sindi with the big red lobed tomatoes grown from 'sweet pea cherry tomato' seed obtained last year at the local Leslie Seed Exchange.
