The Garden

The hospice nurse came on Friday evening. She was helpful. We should be on their schedule now. Cornell is getting harder to understand when he speaks, and has a sharp pain in his right arm which makes it hard to sleep anywhere but on his back. 

Yesterday, I brought a green pepper in from the garden to show Cornell. In the first part of June we still had not planted the garden. Cornell was determined that we have a garden! He usually did most of the work. He was waiting for a break in the weather and for his dizziness to subside. Somewhere along the way, Cornell had bought some starts. . . onion sets, tomatoes, celery, tomatillos and peppers. 

We were trying to keep them alive long enough to get them in the ground. Finally there was a good day and Cornell got help getting the pepper starts out to the garden. The best he could do was to lay in the dirt on his side and dig the holes with a hand shovel, put the plant in the hole, fill in the dirt around the roots then he'd drag a watering can along and give them a drink. At some point he got up. Then he lost his balance and fell backwards into the deer fence. The fence gave way just enough to hammock him there and keep him from hitting the ground. But he was stuck. He had his phone in his pocket and a few minutes later I saw that there was a call from Cornell. I went running to the garden and we got him to the house. So it was one of those peppers 🫑 that I wanted him to see. They were still alive and there was a harvest.

When he saw it, he reached out, grabbed it and took a bite. Had I known he was going to do that I would have washed it. Considering that he'd only had 4 or 5 bites of food all day, I didn't see that coming.