In another twist to this already disrupted year, shortly after I wrote my last blog post we got word that my dad was not doing well in the hospital and was not expected to live. He has Alzheimers and had entered a long term care facility in Feb, just before everything shut down. We were unable to visit him and like many people in his situation, his disease progressed extremely rapidly in the 4 months we hadn't seen him. We made the decision as a family to bring him home to live out his last days with his family around him. Well that was the plan but as usual my dad had other ideas. It turned out his inability to swallow had more to do with the meds he had been on and not because his dementia had progressed that far. Once he stopped taking those meds his appetite came back and he was soon eating and drinking and putting on weight. He regained his ability to feed himself, and then to sit up unaided and eventually to stand and walk on his own. His cognitive functions however are still typical of his disease progression so he couldn't be left alone. I made the decision to move home to help care for him for as long as we were able to do so. That turned out to be 90 days, which was all the Ontario government would pay for home care. Without PSW support, 24 hour a day care is too much for us to handle so on Monday my dad will move to another LTC facility, one that meets his needs better without overly medicating him. Or at least that is the hope
I haven't spent a summer in Sarnia for over 30 years. Usually I'm so busy with work running festivals all summer that I'm lucky if I even get home for a brief visit. My parents still live in the large suburban home we grew up in. My mom's gardens are grown for beauty, over 50 years of love are in those garden beds that take up most of the front and back yards. My dad was the compost manager and vegetable grower, his space was the corners and side yards and containers on the deck. That had dwindled to nothing as his disease progressed. My sister took over some of the containers on the deck but the side yard had gone fallow and was mostly shaded from overgrowth of the neighbour's shrubs. A few raspberry canes survive and some of those had spread into my mother's flower beds so she asked if I would dig them up and replant them back in the side garden. When I went to do so I discovered that my dad's raised beds were still pretty functional and that the neighbour had recently cut back all the shrubs. So here was 3 lovely raised beds full of healthy soil and amazing light, like a blank canvas!
I was missing my gardens back home so it was good opportunity to get my hands dirty. First I stole few tomato seedlings from the overcrowded containers my sister had planted - 6 in total that had labels originally but I didn't keep track so they were all surprises! Then I discovered a few volunteers that were either squash or pumpkins so I gave them some room to spread out. I also discovered some garlic that had been abandoned so had sprouted in clumps. Lastly I bought some onion sets, bush bean and salad greens seeds and seeded them around the squash vines. My parents have a sandpoint well which meant watering well daily was simple so lack of rain wasn't a factor. Having a garden to work in was the best stress release and reviving my dad's garden felt very symbolic.
Meanwhile back in Toronto the Laneway Garden struggled. The late cold spell in May killed off or stunted most of our early seedlings and the drought in July took a heavy toll on the later plantings. Without consistent rain, our rainbarrel irrigation system wasn't much use so Alexey filled two 5 gallon containers every day and dragged them to the laneway in the wagon. Unfortunately the tree roots were slowly choking things from underneath and our tomatoes barely grew beyond the size they were when we transplanted them in May. The buckets we were using for some of the root crops and greens did mildly better but we discovered the pernicious tree roots found their way in through the drainage holes eventually. On the few quick trips back to Toronto I was saddened to see our usually lush space looking so sparse but there was little we could do to remedy it - all of the soil augmentation and watering seem to benefit the trees more than our veggies.
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| So many tree roots... |
My dad's gardens on the other hand flourished wonderfully. The tomatoes soon got too tall for the stakes I had so I tried to send them up the rose trellis. And the tomatoes were huge! The container versions of the same varieties didn't hold a candle to the monsters that were weighing down the vines in the garden.
The volunteer squash vines took over and produced many male flowers which we ate but it never produced any female flowers at all so no fruit- possibly it was sterile from some kind of hybridization. The beans did well but bunnies kept nibbling on them and all the lettuces. But my dad's garden gave me the dirt fix I needed when I needed it most and I'm grateful for the summer I got to spend with my family.
