Puttering about the yard...

Last night and today I worked on prepping the yard a bit for winter.  Our weather has been so very wacky that my weigela didn't stop blooming until yesterday when it froze.  It was rather massive, so Firewood Man suggested that I prune it back to about a two-foot ball.  I have pruned it every save for last year.  I liked the growth that I saw this year, but it out grew the corner bed where it is by the end of the summer.

I also cleaned out the rest of the original raised bed and my raised bed 2.0.  The second round of carrots were still in the original raised bed.  Even though they are supposed to be ready to harvest at 75 days, I left them in the bed until the tops froze on day 97.  Clearly, I am not skilled at growing carrots.  SIGH.

I also pruned back the rose bushes.  One of the new ones died and I pulled it out, but I never got around to replacing it.  I very much wanted to do so, but I kept thinking about that terrible injury to my back the last time I tried to dig a hole.  SIGH.

What's left is to prune back the burning bushes.  I do that every fall, but the leaves haven't dropped yet.  It is far, far easier to shape them when they are bare.  So, I am hoping they drop soon since we've started to have a spate of weather too cold for puttering about the yard.

My final chore was to put away the two fountains.  For the one in the haven, I had a rather difficult time emptying it.  I think I could have built it in a better manner so that breaking it down is much easier.  I have the winter to think about that.  For now, I struggled to pick up the upper pot since it was full of water and the pump was connected to it.  And emptying the larger bottom pot was quite difficult, since it was incredibly heavy and I was trying to direct the water away from my shoes!  I should have changed to my gardening shoes first.  But I got the fountain emptied and moved into the garage.  The pump is drying out and then I will move it to the basement.  I learned the hard way it is best to not freeze your pumps.

I wore my gloves for all the pruning and bed work, but I foolishly took them off before taking apart the fountain on the front porch.  The mini-mountain is made out of a faux pumice or something like that and it cuts your fingers and hands and arms and pretty much any body part that you get near it.  I basically shredded my right pointer finger.  And I realized why it is you don't buy generic medicine.  Neosporin has pain relief in it!  The generic version I grabbed does not.  Be a better shopper, Myrtle!

Last night, I did not sleep much because I kept having sleep paralysis with my night terrors.  It has been a while since I was trapped in my body because of my dreams.  It is a horrify experience that is difficult to explain.  And it got me thinking about nerve pain ... because I didn't want to think about my night terrors.

Like the bouts of sleep paralysis, Trigeminal Neuralgia is such a lonely, lonely condition.  Its pain is truly ineffable.  Even when it is wreaking havoc in your life and driving you to despair, describing it seems impossible.  How could this pain in the side of your face fell you so? It attacks you so suddenly, gripping your whole body even though it is in your face.  For me, each time, I fall to the ground in the grips of its agony.  There is no room for thought or feeling or any kind of sensibility.  There is only the pain.  And when it is over,  I am numb with shock.  When the shock passes, it is hard to do much because of what I just went through.  And I try not to think of what I just went through, because if I did I would ... I would want to die before going through it again.

I cannot fathom how it is for those who suffer constant neuralgia instead of its flares.