A Snippet and musings.

 The view of my "wild garden" from the sitting room window has made a dramatic change as my favourite view  of the waste land was strimmed yesterday.   Gone the long waving grass - in its place a neatly strimmed patch.   The owner sends someone to strim it every year.   It takes more or less a whole day.   The strimmed grass is left and lies there to rot down; the human strimmer goes home with a (I guess) bad back.   The slim black cat was having a mooch round looking at things, especially under the ash saplings where who knows what might lurk.  I look at my finished flowering but drying seeding foxgloves - some  left to seed themselves all over my garden and some, I hope, to add colour to the patch opposite.   Now we need a couple of weeks of hot, dry weather to dry off the seed heads in my garden and rot down the grass on the wild bit - then D my gardener can scatter a few handfuls of foxgloves over the road to seed where they will - as Vita Sackville West said - why is it that self seeding plants always choose places to flower that you would never have thought of but are always better than the ones you chose.   I thought I saw a couple of baby rabbits peeping out of the long grass the other day but the strimmer (human not mechanical) saw not a sign so perhaps wishful thinking on my part.   But in any case he always leaves the bottom corner.

Now to things that go bump in the night!   Not strictly true.   Luckily there was no bump there but certainly restlessness in the extreme.   Have you noticed how much worse things seem at the midnight hour than they really are in broad daylight?   That bill that needs paying - an almost insurmountable amount that two days later you have completely forgotten about once you have paid it; that cold one's small child has that in the small hours seems certain to turn to pneumonia - a worry quickly dissipated when they wake you at six the next morning charging up and down the landing with their latest game.

My Physiotherapist diagnosed my problems, manipulated various areas of my back and then wrote out some exercises for me to do.   I did them three times yesterday as instructed, and by evening - very tired I might add- when I went to bed I felt that already my problems with walking were improving. At midnight my 'commode call' woke me - the flip side of my bedtime drink.  I threw back the covers to get out of bed and 'wham!' a violent pain shot along my right groin - so painful that I shouted out loud.   It also made me jerk into a difficult position.   A position that certainly was not concomitant with making a quick exit from my bed to the commode, which sits by the bedside.

I floundered about on the duvet like a beached whale, shouting out in pain every now and then.   In short I could neither reach for the 'fence' down the side of the bed or push myself up with my hands.   After several tries I resorted to a woman's reaction - I cried.   I envisaged never again being able to walk, to having to go into care because I couldn't manage in my home alone.  Then the voice of reaso kicked in - I lay still for five minutes and then very carefully sat up.   I was still intact, I sat up gingerly and climbed out of bed using my 'fence' for support and reached the commode  in time.  But I hurt - by golly I hurt.   And what is more I dare not climb back into bed for fear of not being able to get out next time.   Instead I struggled into my dressing gown and using my walker dragged myself into the sitting room.   I spent the rest of my night in my chair.   This morning I felt wretched and was totally unable to use my right leg (this has been a problem for the last week).

My carer came to find me a trembling heap - in tears again the moment she spoke.   By the time she went an hour later I was more or less back to normal and cheerful with it.  Now- two hours later- I know that the pains in my leg and groin will go and the probable cause of my  demise is that I did far too much exercise yeterday ( read her instructions wrong and did three times as much as I should have done.)

So now I am away to try and get a couple of hour's sleep - I keep falling asleep writing this.  (e and oa)