Life in Flux

After the visit to my hip surgeon on Tuesday, life has set off on a slightly different current for me.  I did not realize that I must not kneel down on all fours.  That is injurious to the new joint, I was told.  I must never again think about kneeling, squatting, or running.  Well, the running is a non-issue with me.  But kneeling in the dirt or to clean up spills and floor messes, and squatting to see to a child or to take a photo?  It seems a little cruel.  I now have these truly adorable grandchildren to love and a steeply sloping yard for gardening, and rather than plunging into it with arms thrown wide, I must re-think how I do any of it.

Solutions:  I will have a chair nearby for any meltdowns from the children, and I will turn my energies to container potting— right after Charles and I get the perennials in.  I have found that I can dig left-footedly, so if I dig, perhaps he will be kind enough to get close to the ground and set the plants in place.  And I do have a start on an outstanding collection of pots (in Knoxville the ground was too rough, and I put pots on the deck and gardened there for the most part), which I will expand.  With the large pots, I can still break soil between my fingers and sit in a chair and plant things. . .

And when all the hard work is done, I can look out the windows of the studio and stitch the shapes and colors that are the result of our labors.  Soon Charles will open the fountain, all the little ground creepers will be put between the stones of the patio, and life will settle into late spring and early summer routines.  Not being able to kneel in the dirt is certainly a more than fair trade-off for having no pain and needing to be careful of where and how I walk.

Meanwhile, I have taken a book down from the shelf and am immersed in studying Stitch Dissolve Distort with machine embroidery by Valerie Campbell-Harding and Maggie Grey.  I wrote about it on Free the Stitches this morning, so pop over and take a peek, if you have a moment.