Sad day for a friend...

Today, an old friend is suffering the loss of his wife.

Greg was a guy that I knew when I was 15 years old, you could almost say he was my first boyfriend. I wouldn't exactly say we dated because I really wasn't allowed to at that age, but we hung out together. We were friends through church, so we sat together at Church, and we went to church youth functions together. We went on a few sort-of dates, I guess you could call them that, but never without a chaperone.  We lived about 55 miles apart, so it's not like we could "sneak around" together. It was innocent enough... The extent of our intimacy was holding hands and kissing. He was two or three years older than me, very very smart. One might say he was a little "nerdy", but I thought he was very cool and mature as he wore a beard and looked much like Elton John on the cover of his early album, Honky Chateau.  And he was always so nice to me, never an unkind word or criticism. There came a point in time when our church had a division and his family went one way and mine went the other. I think we only saw each other once after that and we both knew that it was pretty much the end, and we accepted it. Life went on and we grew up...

I managed to track him down probably around 2007 or so, maybe a bit earlier. Not that I had been trying before... One day I was thinking about him and I just put his name in Google and up popped a website called Sortinghat.net and there was a photo of an old guy on there who was most assuredly him. A long gray beard down to about mid-chest, pictures of he and his wife performing in a Renaissance Faire in full garb, he as a blacksmith (if I recall correctly) and she dancing in several photos.  Looked like such fun!  I sent him an email thinking he might not even remember me, but he did. And we have been kind of online friends since. Friends is probably stretching it a bit... He sends out what he calls "Newzines", his version of a mass newsletter to keep his buds up-to-date on their doings.  He added me to his list, so I got to see the details of his life from that point on. I would occasionally respond or comment, but in the beginning it kind of felt weird to be looking into the life of somebody that I really didn't know that well anymore. But it was interesting, and I could tell that he was still the smarty pants by his writing. (I mean that affectionately and in a positive light - I used to call my brother a Smarty Pants because he was a real thinker!) Came to find out that he had been a technical writer for many years, which didn't surprise me.   By the time I caught up to him, he and his wife were just getting into real estate in Flagstaff, Arizona. They had both gotten their real estate licenses and it looked like they were living pretty large in a nice home there. Well, living large by my standards! But in 2008, the economy went to shit, and especially the housing industry.  I mean, this was literally RIGHT after they got their real estate licenses and were ready to jump into the great housing market. To make a long story short, that was the end of any kind of decent living for he and his wife. Sadly, their lives spiraled down the toilet something fierce for the next few years. They lost their house in Flagstaff, but they had a home in California as well with renters in it. They asked the renters to leave and packed up their things and they moved back in that house. They proceeded to lose that home as they couldn't find work. So then they packed up a few Pods with their stuff which went in to storage while they tried to find their new niche. I mean, who wouldn't assume that things would improve at some point and you would need all your "stuff" to get on with life?  But they were pretty much Nomads after that, bunking in with people they knew for periods of time until they felt they had outstayed their welcome, then moving on. They had periods of time when they lived in their van. They would rent from people who were desperate because of the economy, just a room, all the time paying for storage of their stuff. As time went by, they would get rid of a Pod's worth of stuff, selling and or giving it away trying to pare down and save money.

There were times when Greg worked ...  Things would look up a for awhile , but all the jobs he worked were temporary and it would eventually end, and things would get bad again. Greg's wife was a few years older than him and as soon as she went on Social Security, I think things improved a little bit. And then he went on SS and things got good enough that a couple years ago, they actually got their own apartment. By then, I'm sure that felt wonderful, even if it was very modest... It must not have been too long after that his wife, Bonnie, was diagnosed with cervical cancer. I didn't know about this because apparently he had sent out one of his newsletters explaining this and said that if the recipients  wanted to stay apprised of the situation, please respond and I didn't, so he took me off the list. Well it sounded like that was last summer, and of course I was going through a lot with Mark at that time, so I probably just missed it. Well a couple of days ago, he somehow included me in his list. It was brief but it was obvious his wife was not long for this Earth and I responded and asked what had happened...

Well, at this point she was very very bad and he was surprised that she had made it through the night before. It was obvious the end was very near, so I responded with an appropriate letter of sympathy and moral support. Then this morning, I found emails, one from last night saying that she had passed and one from this morning with more detail, mostly of his feelings. It brings up a lot of emotions because I feel so bad that he's going through this all alone... Like me, they never had children. I know they have a lot of friends, and he has siblings, but I don't think any of them are close by. All the years that things were so terrible for them there in California, he would never move away from the area even though things were better in other places in the country including here. I hope maybe he'll get away from there now... I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell that he would ever come back here. He never said directly, but I got the distinct impression that he had some very very bad memories from here. He has a sister that still lives here I believe, but I think his brothers both live out in that direction somewhere. It would be good if perhaps he could move closer to one of them.

But this also brought up a lot of emotions for me because I have a feeling I've got shit like this and my future. Mark is exhibiting all kinds of signs of decline, though he would never ever admit it. His left hand has pretty much quit working completely and his right hand isn't working the way it should. I have to help him button his cuffs, buckle his belt, zip up his coat. He manages to button up the front of his shirt, though it takes him 10 -15 minutes. And he drops a lot of stuff. His balance is really bad... When he gets up out of the dining room chair, which is on rollers, he stumbles and the chair goes flying backwards. I told him I think I'm going to have to get him a stationary chair, but I'm afraid that what will happen is it'll just tumble backwards. He fell down without any explanation a couple days ago bringing his lunch into the house. His blood pressure has been high in spite of taking medicine for it... I'm sure all of this is just the Buerger's disease progressing, but if I mention that at all he gets furious. He just doesn't want to face the fact that he has it, but everything points to that. Of course if he goes to a specialist, they're just going to tell him he needs to stop smoking because that's what causes it. But he doesn't want to hear that and he won't do that of course. So, because of all this, I have a feeling that I've got some serious unpleasantness in my future as he declines... The silver lining I can find in this is that my health is fairly good.  It would be even harder if I had serious health issues...

On to more upbeat subjects...

My splashy clone of fungii, which grows in the sunroom, has new growth in spite of the time of year.  Two new vines, one with a set of new full-size leaves and another one with a pair of nice young leaves...

I find it interesting that new leaves tend to start out very long and slender then grow into wide, round leaves.  And they tend to lose the fuzz as they mature, resulting in a very shiny, smooth leaf.  This clone is very different from my older clone. 

 

I also discovered that my biggest macrophylla has a new leaf coming on.  I will keep my excitement under control at this point because I had a new leaf coming on that just sat there, not growing for a few weeks then one day it was just gone, apparently dropped and shriveled to nothing before I even noticed.  Wahhh!  But this one has already grown bigger than the one that was hopelessly stuck in tiny-mode.  Maybe it will make it.  Of course, it's nowhere near where I put the cloning gel...  Did I ever blog about that??  Someone on FB posted about using cloning paste, which is usually used to promote "keikis" (baby plantlets) to form on flower stems, to promote new growth on the stems on Hoyas.  So I got some and I've applied it to a few stems.  I'm wondering if I didn't scrape away enough on the stem to give it a chance.  I'll keep trying...

My Pink Dragon has been in a steep decline for the last month.  It was doing so well this summer, I'm just heartbroken... So I decided to try to salvage it and took three big cuttings and put them all in hydroton.  I kept the "stump", but I have a feeling it won't grow.  But one never knows!  I've seen them come back when I didn't think there was a snowball's chance in hell, so I never assume the worst until it's obvious there is no hope. Here's one of them...

I decided to root two small species in hydroton as well.  A cutting of krohniana in a little pimento jar and a cutting of curtisii in a salt shaker...

I'll be anxious to see how they do.  Marco is having great success with fast rooting.  Rooting up here this time of year is a bit of a challenge, so this may be the way to do it in fall and winter.  Of course, I've been growing several in hydroton for quite a few years, but I always thought of it as my last resort go-to because it is an expensive medium.  In fact, I went by Paradigm Gardens and got a bag as I used up the last of what I had, which I didn't pay for.  Back when Liane was cleaning out her friend's store (because he decided to move to AZ where he could grow pot legally...), she had more than he could afford to ship and she gave me a big bag of it.  That was probably 10 years ago!  This bag was a 25 qt bag and cost about a buck a quart.  I guess when  you consider that you can reuse it, maybe it isn't really all that expensive.  But I don't think I'd want to be shipping it off with my sale plants.  If I can just use it as a starter, to get roots going, that may be all I need it for.  We'll see how it goes.  That's what's exciting about this hobby - there's always something new to try.

 

Let's see... my Thanksgiving cactus is blooming up a storm!

It seems to love the spot in the front window.  They say they need time in complete darkness to bloom.  I think this proves otherwise!

I discovered that one of my Sansevierias has a flower spike!  I bet it's been at least 10 years since I had a Sans bloom!  I can't wait until they mature and start to exude that sweet perfumy scent!  This one is called 'Frosty Spears".

I took a break to do some watering in the GH and I found a flower on a Rhipsalis that I got from Denny's collection - R. neves armondii.  Denny passed away a year ago in October, and his daughters started distributing his collection this last spring.  I'm guessing Kathy and I drove over there (Des Moines) to peruse his collection in April or thereabouts.  Let's put it this way - it was warm enough that I put it straight outside when I brought it back.  The poor thing was in a heavy sandy mix and seemed like it had been kept too dry, and the pot was too large as well.  It hung out one side and looked kinda sad, but I'm a fan of the Rhips and wanted to try to salvage it.  I decided to put it in that sideways pot so that it would look like it was intended to flow all out one side.  And it turned out awesome.  Then it was just a matter of seeing if it would grow.  I can't say whether it has or not, really, but I figure a flower, even just a single one, is a good indicator!  Check out the flower and a shot of the middle of the plant...

 And here is the pot it's in...

 

Well, that's probably about enough for today.  As I get older, I'm more and more appreciative that I fell into this hobby at a young age. It's what keeps me sane these days!