And one last thought, before baking

Everything right now is Danny. And my friends would say, with varying tones that range from tender and  understanding, to amused and indulgent, to outright critical - "sooo.. what exactly has changed here?"

but the truth is, central as he is to my happiness, my daily life, my joy - there is a shift now as I am so panicked with losing him, and trying so hard to embody the "wisewoman" energy I am occasionally, very occasionally, accused of possessing.

And it's this; I can't look at anything without seeing a flashback or feeling an upswell of emotion I hardly know how to manage.

Example; the stand of Rosebay Willowherb is ALL ABOUT DANNY's prostate. 


All the Shepherd's purse and Sumac here  points me to the bleeding issue, that's what they are here for, Dan's prostate/UTI. No other reason.

I replace the newly washed bathmat he threw up on two days ago, and I remember a thousand times,  him curling up in it to sleep beside the tub whole I took a bath...the bed next door was more comfy,but nearness to Mom was everything. If I took a bath right this very minute, he'd be in there on that mat.


Rosebeads in the kitchen, made from the huge rose back at Rupert - I remember those days, gathering petals!  That oak mug I don't use so much in summer,  brings me back to so many foggy fall mornings out back, guzzling coffee- way way too much coffee - watching deer in the back, Dan so anxious to get out and get running.

Tatyana curled up with Dan, as she does all the time these days, brings back how Evita needed to snuggle with him when she was pregnant with Tatyana. He was not even a year old here.

He always radiated sweetness, warmth, innocence, joy.

We walk around the circle - 14 years ago I would have known most of the plants I see now, but now I can do so much more than ID them and talk about "uses". My plant knowledge exploded over the many years we spent in the woods together...the fields...and back home to my studies and his comfy bed at my feet.

I am in some strange liminal ghost world between the incredible gift of these vanished years (and especially Rupert, no matter how cruel it ultimately was to me)...and whatever lies ahead.


I want to do it all over again, so much.
I am stunned at how quickly a whole 14 years has vanished.
I look for a place inside to carry this, but it is too full of love to accept the load of loss and  sorrow.

I know I will find it when the day comes, when the absence appears - but not today.
Today is just about presence...and I do mean, literally, everywhere.

Two in one day...wait, one weekend....

...and I have a hundred tasks to do, but my pain really flared up yesterday, with Dan's reaction to his meds, and probably this new bed wedge I could'nt afford, but had SUCH HIGH HOPES for, but I hurt a lot more after two hours lying on it..anyway, I need a day off so once again, the hundred things pulling at me to get done have to wait.

I think this is what is currently termed a "self care" day.

I'm lying on my elevated sofa bed (it's on bricks, because I can really hurt myself getting up from too low a position) with Danny snoring beside me, tooling around here - etsy, pinterest,  blogs I follow not-about-dogs, videos on jewelry making...Alex is making pizza, a weekend ritual, we call pizza-and-terrorism, because we seem to watch one terrorist type thing after another these days - just finished Homeland and now a rewatch of 24. Alex prefers these types of shows, and sci-fi, to the moody British dramas and various fantasy series I tend to favour, but we have watched oodles of those and hey,I can appreciate a good action series, no question.

I have a few emails to get to and then basically I did nothing today...nothing work related, anyway. I made a meatloaf for the boys, and the usual 54876 dishes, and blogged here.
Moments like this life almost feels...normal.

But then, I took pictures with my crappy 15 year old digital camera, pics of the garden and animals, almost all crappy (because 15 years...) and the reality caught me by the heart again. I want to take a zillion pictures because this is probably Dan's last summer on earth, and I hate the idea of recording anything...because it is probably Dan's last summer on earth.

Wanting to record it all won out.

I had planned to start using the good camera Alex bought me over a year ago, but not in this heat wave (which looks like it will not break in the next two weeks) and not with Dan so unwell. Focus for me: work, staying in positivity as much as I can, feeding Dan. And making sure I have time for my cats (Mithrandir in particular suffers without regular, focused Mom time) and Zeke and Korky.

Spread thin, yes, but in the best of all possible ways...because the love of my animals, and the rewards of my work, are what keep me going, when everything inside me wants to just collapse into fetal position and  sob.

Today there will be blueberry pancakes (for us,and roast chicken, hopefully for Dan) and the last season of 24, and badly needed rain. And, today too, there is still my soulmate..weaker and obviously unwell, but still here and interested in food and his walks. Today, still, I have my Dan.


Yesterday

 

Part of a luscious stand of  Rosebay Willowherb - useful for bladder and prostate issues...

As always, The Zeke is concerned about Mom

Kitchen bouquet with herbs grown by me, and wild

The raised beds did not get put in this year as planned, leaving me with many more herbs than I can raise in pots. Many found good homes locally, but nobody wanted the mugwort or the evening primrose, seen as "weeds' by most.

I will just have to find places to plant them and watch them flourish - beautiful medicinals, both.






The lilac Alex brought me two years ago - something I miss so much from "home" (Rupert)...doing pretty well.

Danny, my love...too hot to be out much, but he still likes a toodle around the yard.

Happy Sunday, my peeps. I'm off to start my cooking.

..and where we're at today...

..leaning into gratitude, for the things that are still good.

Danny has not declined steeply, but neither is he much better. Well, on one front - the "gross hematuria" - vetspeak for a lot of blood in the urine, visible to the eye - has stopped altogether. That's an improvement...but, his weirdness with food continues, and we don't have an exact cause - he has some gingivitis, and he is too old to safely put him under and address that, so I offer soft things like pate and soft cheeses and cat food and meat congee, but then he insists on something crunchy and there's no sign of discomfort...I hate, hate HATE not knowing what' s going on.

Maybe one of the lessons now, one of the graces, is just that; acceptance.  It isn't my best thing; I figure, with all the things humanity can do (space travel, heart transplants, Haagen Dazs Rocky Road) we should be able to forestall ageing and we should be able to treat...well, everything. As an herbalist I hate flying blind, but maybe I am too dependent now on veterinary input (a truly great herbalist can work without it, though I can't say that on my science-y groups, or anywhere professional I could get slammed by those who don't get it).  So we are focusing on nourishment of body (any food he wants any time he wants it and in pretty much any amount, though he simply cannot OD on chicken liver or butter) and more joy,  despite this horrible heat that means I can't take him for several little toodles every day, and my mounting concern about my ability to make ends meet in a market just way beyond saturated with newcomers,  I will find joy.

And acceptance. I can work on that.

There are indeed face transplants and space travel  and Rocky Road -  but little help for my back, and Danny can't endure another ultrasound..and.... everything dies.

This dog...this Spirit, came into my life in a burst of joy,  his song was always Good Morning, Starshine - and he brought such healing and focus and beauty to my life I honestly wonder if I'd have made it through my fifties without him. And yet I not only made it, through so much tragedy and loss, I would actually consider that decade to be the best of my life - largely because of him. He came into my life full of joy, he will leave it as joyfully ( read; filled with gratitude and love and tenderness and chicken liver pate) as is humanly possible. I will keep his gifts in my heart and work, because to do that keeps him with me and keeps our beautiful lost years alive.

I can do this.

I may need help, and a lot of ice cream, but.
I can lose weight later.

He's so worth it.

Yesterday after his walk - he loves the walk but has no patience with waiting to get back in. <3

A Good and Quiet Weekend

 ...this last one was...

When I started this blog I had not intended the whole focus to be Danny, his decline and eventual passing, but rather a place to share the animal stories, kitchen witchery, my Avalonian and Druidic studies, herbalism and more that define my life. I had posted on Mallow and White pine for all the Rupert years, but since I'm still so torn up about that, I felt I couldn't just keep on with it.I mean, I open that blog and just cry and cry.... moving there was huge, leaving was devastating, and this is a new life. So, a new blog, right?   In addition to being Dan's Mom, I also have 5 cats, an irrepressible parrot, and Zeke, who was always Alex's dog but lives fulltime with me now (as does Alex) and whom I adore. I live in a magical little corner of an oak, beech and hemlock forest, in a HUGE house - I occupy the main floor, Alex has the second, one huge man cave, really -  and all our stuff from Rupert, the third. There is no garage or basement so that's meant we have to put all the "stuff" - mostly, ahem, Alex's - somewhere. It's a smaller living space or me with just the one floor, but a much better one than the house in Rupert; still, my heart yearns for the old days endlessly. After three years I should have made peace, but I close my eyes and it's all there - every magical walk, every misty  morning, every starry winter night. I feel that the house we are in now, which I call Owlhaven (you have to love a place with so many owls) is  an intermediate space, between the  magic of Rupert and what I hope and intend will be my own land and final home. There are so many aspects here to love, and I really do,  so I decided to blog this part of the journey in this new blog.

But, you know, Dan has been getting older and facing more challenges, so every moment I can grab to write, really he is mostly what is on my mind.

So that's what I'm led to write about, but hope to also start talking about some of the plants that surround me, we really have a beautiful array of wild plants and fungi - and the trees! I do seriously miss the silver maple (I actually bought Silver Maple china plates in memoriam, although the leaves aren't really right, I needed some china and I'm so intensely sentimental) and above all, the balsam poplars,but those  idiots who occupied my house cut them all down before I moved out - I will never forget the pain of that day, inside listening to these chortling imbeciles hack down the sacred trees I loved so much, helpless, - it was awful). So no poplars but a gorgeous array of sugar maple, red oak, beech, hemlock, smatterings of hop hornbeam, paper birch and elm. And although we had no birds at all the summer we moved in, save a couple raucous blue jays and one very enthusiastic peewee, we are now graced with so many - goldfinches, three types of woodpecker, chickadees, nuthatches, various warblers, a veery, a couple of thrushes, an ovenbird, loons, ravens and crows,and of course, the owls (mostly Barred, but also a Barn Owl makes an appearance as does a Great Horned, from time to time)

and the plants! For me, the essence of what is called "Witchcraft" (or  the Magical Path, or Druidry) is knowledge - well, let''s say knowledge is one cornerstone of it. All the pretty pictures in the world don't make you a Witch, all the great finds on etsy - it's knowledge as a core element that bestows a right to those titles. And the topics we need to know are vast -in this case, knowing the names and magical properties as well as all the healing aspects of the plants around you is a huge part of the Earth Path. And, there are many familiar friends here - St.John's wort, raspberry, goldenrod, ox eye daisy, plantain, shepherd's purse, mullein, coltsfoot, several types of fern, yarrow, ground ivy and many more...but there is also a huge array of mushrooms - reishi, ghost pipe, amanita - avens, corydalis, lady's thumb- and and sumac everywhere, some new allies for whom I feel a deep connection and am adding much more to my Materia Medica about.

The soil here is not great,  so we are building raised beds for my mallows, hyssop, monarda, motherwort, elecampane and betony, lavender and spearmint and more. But whereas Rupert was farmland encircled by smaller patches of woodland, Owlhaven is a cheerful cul de sac with more houses around it than I am used to, but backs onto deeper and wilder forest...whose mysteries I have been so thrilled to start penetrating. The journey has not taken me exactly where I had been aiming... but as the expression goes " If you want to make the gods laugh, tell them your plans". Right now, with so much turmoil in the world, and the challenges of my own life - my back, and Danny for two of the bigger ones - I am so blessed by this sacred space, this piece of true wildness - this sanctuary.

I hope to add more on the flora and fauna, as well as the spiritual energy of this place, in the months ahead.

My beautiful staghorn sumac

Silver Maple china by Royal Albert  - remembrance.....

This little rose has great significance for me, I will tell that story later on...

 A sign on my summer mantle - and yes, it absolutely does. <3


Here's to another "good and quiet weekend" ahead!