Bizarro Land ~ and Mid month Miscellaneous

 

Hi everyone! I'll start with this lovely surprise flower that bloomed this week. 

                             

I thought it was a huge weed--''jack in the beanstalk"--- maybe a mullein or dune cockleburr?

It is huge, with big hairy leaves and odd buds.

You can see why I thought it is a cockleburr, via google:

I was so surprised to find this lovely bright red flower. Maybe it's a form of gerbera daisy? edit: Pia on Instagram kindly ID'd this as a Mexican Sunflower! 

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Newest Perpetual Journal drawing, the dreaded Chinese Lantern Fly. It was only here, very here! one week but I understand they lay their eggs everywhere before perishing on the beach tideline. Really icky, not as pretty as they may look.

Next drawing, just started, is a golden heart leaf I picked up yesterday--similar to this one, but lost in the shuffle, and again, there also will be some butterflies.

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My brother got to go to the big Springfield Ohio Extravaganza Flea today and tomorrow. Color me so green with envy. Maybe he'll send photos for me to share. And yes, I gave him my Christmas list.

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While everyone else seems to be jumping on the Scrappy Ohio Stars sewalong from Taryn at  Repro Quilt Lover, I am still sewing away on my hand applique projects. I finished the first block: White Tulips. 

It's intended for a ''modern farmhouse'' style quilt with the blocks set in natural /off white linen .

Very Lizzy, this block anyway. [the running stitch applique adds dimension and texture].

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Now for my visit to the bizarre world of a hospital emergency room. Or as they now call it the ED, which makes me think of couples in bathtubs, champagne clutched desperately as the  sun sets on their future: ads for ED, erectile disfunction. 

Anyway:

On Wednesday I got a frantic text from the primary care doctor's office after an annual check up. "You must go to the emergency room immediately and get blood transfusions!!!!"

?

"Don't drive, call an ambulance." Let me start with: I wouldn't call an ambulance unless I was dying---was I dying? No. My friend drove me. The wait wasn't too long to be seen--maybe two hours?---but then...I waited 7 hours for the transfusions to start. My friends went home to bed, I was all alone in this scary freezing cold place. 

Now if it was such a crisis, why the long wait? I asked what was taking so long? "Coming from the blood bank." 

"Oh okay, where is the  blood bank?" picturing it being miles away, maybe even in the city? "Oh well it's here, in the hospital."  oh. 

Uh huh.

I was there all afternoon, all night, into the morning yesterday. Of course no way to sleep and in the almost 24 hours I was there, I was so cold and so hungry! This is all I was given to eat, by a kindly nurse who went hunting for food. There's no regular food service in the ED, of course.

This is the night desk.
That wall lights up and jiggles. Is it a heart monitor or art? Plus ongoing ''call' strobes. Migraine time.

Room one in main sector.

A cleaner if barren room two. Private with its own staff of nurses, sort of ER intensive care-ish?

Because omigosh this place is NOT clean at all, only about one in six persons were masked, though i wore my own mask until I was left alone all night with my bags of blood. I hope I don't get Covid!

All this because I hadn't taken my iron supplements for a few weeks [stomachache trigger], and got a bad report on my lab work. Now I'm awaiting a grocery delivery so I can do my food prep / cooking before my  regular IV day on Monday. There's a reason for the word "patient"! LOL.

I will say the nurses and other helpers were efficient and very kind, which is rare indeed. The doctors were---I'll say, "curt''. But again, not really rude. 

Baby Mo had to go stay with friends. He loves kids but is a bit shy.

I'll be back, soon unless we lose power as H Lee saunters by on its way to the Cape.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach...

Hurricane waves, photos from a friend who went to look earlier. 

Click for vid of surf here.

  local waves  https://pix11.com/news/local-news/see-it-big-waves-on-li-as-hurricane-lee-heads-north/

September 11, 2001

 and now:

The blue memorial lights. This is a screenshot but I will see them from my house, lighting the skies.

Never forget.

Heat Wave

 

The hottest weeks of Summer have arrived, bringing intense brilliant sunshine and high humidity. Temps in the high 80s at noon---which is hot for us at the beach.  I always feel so sad for the children going back to school at the peak of the season.

My zinnias are suddenly dry and crunchy; Mo is puzzled: why can he not be allowed out , why are his walkies curtailed? 80 is the the cutoff temp for flat faced dogs. It is better to keep Mo cool indoors than to let him run around and overheat/ cool down.

We have about 45 minutes sit and sew time round 4.30 now. Usually a breeze picks up by then, though the lower September sun is blinding at times. It's too late, too short, but better than being closed in. I'm hand sewing the first Sarah Sporrer block.

The meadow pots look sere, as they would in late summer. I water two or three times a day. The marigolds have been little star performers, flowering on valiantly. The zinnias are tall and leggy but still blooming prettily.

The flowers in the large bird crock, with a plastic pot inside have fared the best, the old thick crock holds moisture and shades the plants' stem bases and roots.

This is a late growing wildflower in the meadow pot. Whatever could it be? Beebalm? Catmint? {EDIT: one bloomed just today! They're miniature sunflowers, so unexpected.]

What to do about the zinnies?---they are called ''cut and come again''. Should I cut them back, bring a big bouquet into the house? If I water and fertilize them they have about ten weeks growing season to recover and rebloom.

I always find it hard to cut my garden pots' flowers. My dad was the same and my mom was the champion of the tiny bouquet bouquet. She'd snip only a few blooms for the seaglass bottles or tiny pitchers on her kitchen windowsill.

A blog I have followed for years had an odd post recently. The writer, a man in the UK, gleefully  recounted how he once, in a late night , drunken binge, stole hundreds of daffodils and specimen tulips from all the tiny front gardens in his town. He bragged about this--he has recounted the incident many times. I refrained from commenting, knowing I'd be called a troll--but imagine the people whose spring flowers --carefully grown in tiny cherished city front gardens--- were vandalized. All that planning, effort, expense, and joy. What a sad story.

As the season has evolved I've enjoyed seeing the many many zinnia varieties that seeded and grew for me. Such a sweetly humble, quotidian flower. But suited for the hot dry deck, and so sweet and colorful.

Tomorrow or Saturday may be a bit cooler. Will I get the courage to go out with my scissors and snip the zinnies?

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PS The Fall clothes catalogs are here. I don't need much but I have an LL Bean refund to spend. Must use it before I lose it! I will order a soft grey cashmere sweater later, looking forward to crisp January days. [In a perfect, no-budget world, I'd buy the purple, the coral rose, the shell pink, the cinnamon!]

love

lizzy

gone to the beach....

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Probably my poorest scribbling yet. For some reason I was hooked on using a wide tip Sharpie pen to draw with, the results aren't so good.

Perpetual journal, a handful of beach treasures. 

I must draw the big blue dragonfly--or maybe the dreaded Spotted Red Lantern Fly? Def not up to drawing the first Monarch butterfly who visited; I'll just make a note maybe. Not a fan of bugs~ googleimage, he was too fast to take a pic.

                         

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