The end is near...

04/17:  My poor mother... she's really having a hard time transitioning.  And I feel so helpless.  All I can do is wake her up and give her more meds.  Hospice gave her morphine and anti-anxiety medicine to take together as a sort of "relax and sleep" cocktail.  It's little doses that can be taken at one hour intervals.  We both forgot to give it to her last night.  (She's been doing it mostly just at bedtime.)  She slept all day and I guess that's what threw us off.  Anyway, she had a bad night and a bad start to today (like yesterday) so she went back to bed and I gave her doses, one per hour for the first 3 hours.  Then I waited two and she had another.  Now it's been 3 hours and she didn't want another dose yet. She's utterly miserable.  We just talked for a bit - she wishes Wes (my brother) would grab her hand and pull her out of that old body into what's next.  I told her I'm talking to him every minute... apparently, he can't do that for whatever reason.  He'll know the moment she's ready.

And that's all I'm going to say on that subject.  I'm living it and that's enough.  No need to dwell on what's right here...  So on to the subject of plants!  Spring is definitely in the air, but we're still on that back-and-forth, yo-yo kind of weather.  Warm (had to turn on the A/C for 2 days last week!) then cold... It went from A/C weather one day to furnace weather the next.  We got cold rain and gales that howled for about 36 hours!  Today it's a perfect 65 degrees and still as can be.  As soon as it reached 40 this morning, I put plants back out.  I left out the little bulbs I've potted up with towels over them, and my Jade plants.  Well, Thursday and Friday nights it's supposed to fall below freezing, so it will ALL have to come back in for a couple days.  Maybe after that, it can all stay out, but you can't bank on it...

So I've potted up another batch of little SA bulbs, so right now I'm hovering at about 160 or so.  I wish they'd get to growing.  I can't sell them in 2 weeks if they have no leaves on them.  I have more pots of bulbs to break apart...

I got up to the top shelf to do some watering today and found two of my newest Haworthias looking like a million bucks:

I believe the top one is one of the emelyae hybrids and the bottom one is the one they call H. pumila 'Donuts'.  You can see why with the little circles!  Both are looking magnificent!  I hope to split up some of my really overgrown Haworthias this year...

I took my Hoya surigaoensis to the sink yesterday and took a deep breath and cut off the biggest leaf.  It had an imperfection on it, right in the middle, that has bugged me for a couple years.  But it was otherwise such a HUGE beautiful leaf, it was hard to get myself to do it.  I should have done it sooner.  Every time I look at it, my eye is drawn to that imperfection.  Now it's a beautifully pristine plant!

What spectacularly shiny big leaves this one has!

I have a Echeveria that has been blooming.  The pot it's in actually has three different Echeverias in it...

 

I may have to restart the plant itself once it's done blooming as it has a long stem.  I did that last fall with a couple Echeverias and one is in the front window and is budding up!  I'm surprised that it will bloom this quick after getting whacked just a few months ago!

Check out my Hoya carnosa ssp. carnosa:

This darling is growing like a freakin' weed!  I lost count of how many new vines and growth points it has!  I think it must be very happy in it's spot in the sunroom.

My one and only moth orchid has been under the grow light in the sunroom for awhile and it's rewarding me with a flower spinke, first time in a few years!

 

I'd forgotten how pretty it was!  The plant itself looks kind of meh... I don't think it looks very good.  When it's done blooming, I may just toss it and get a new one.

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 04/20  Three days later and Mom's still hanging in there.  All she's getting down is ice chips.  A couple days ago she tried a sip of water and it got her hacking and spitting, so now she only does ice chips.  She's SO out of it, though we did have a fairly lucid conversation last night.  Her eyes were all but closed, but we chatted a bit.  It's hard for her to keep focused.

 04/22 This is the day I think she's been waiting for.  It's her birthday.  She was almost there last night around 11:30 - I was sure she was making the transition, and I'm thinking maybe she did.  There has been really no lucid conversation in a couple days, though she has been calling out to Grandma Dora and even Connie a couple times.  Mostly her mom..  Merry has been here since yesterday morning.  I think she felt like the time is near and she needs to be here in spite of it being their busy time.  Maybe that's why the weather has been cold - to make it so Rick can handle things on his own right now.

 04/27  I'm going to finish and publish this.  Mom passed sometime in the night on Tuesday (the 25th).  She hadn't been responsive for about 4 days.  When I found her, I cried for about 5 minutes and then I told her "congratulations, Mom, you made it!"  I try not to think about the fact that I have to live the rest of my life without my mom because the idea can bring on a barrage of tears.  I have to tell myself that everyone goes through this, buck up!  Doesn't help, but then I just launch into a rampage of gratitude.  I'm grateful that she moved in with me a year ago and we got this year of constant companionship.  I'm grateful that she could spend her last days here in the comfort of what was her home, too, and didn't have to spend her last days and hours in a hospital or nursing home.  I'm grateful we had the aid of such wonderful hospice folks.  I'm grateful my job was so flexible that I was able to take that last couple months off to watch over her and help as much as I was able to. I'm grateful I had my mom for 64 years - I know SO many people (including Mom!) who lost their mothers quite young!  I'm grateful that we were so close, and so much alike that it was easy living together.  I'm grateful that she was clearly ready and slipped away with as much dignity as one can with some of the terrible things she had to endure the last few months.  And I'm grateful that we have this belief system that says she is NOT gone, that her spirit is right here with me until the day I join her.  

So, my first "sign" story is actually from the day before she passed.  I am of the belief that when someone is unconscious, comatose, unresponsive, whatever you want to call it, or even delirious, that person's spirit had probably already left their body.  It may still have a minor connection until the body stops, but I think they're mostly "out".  So I started asking Mom, by Sunday, please give me a sign if you're out.  It would make me feel a little better to know she wasn't suffering in there.  Monday, I opened the paper... here's my usual routine regarding the paper, which I get Mon-Fri.  I only get it for the puzzles, so I pull the puzzle page, fold it so the puzzles are on the outside and put it in the stack of puzzles.  Then when I feel like doing a puzzle, I pull from the stack, so I may be doing a puzzle from a month ago or last week.  That day, I decided to do "today's" puzzles.  When I got to the Jumble, here's what the words were:

I got chills when I filled in "Mommy", but then came "raven" - birds are purported to be messengers from our loved ones.  "Banana" I have to explain - my mom LOVES bananas, and I have to tell you that I have bought more bananas in the last year than I have bought in probably the previous 25 years!  I had to laugh at it!  And "handle"... I think she's saying "You can handle this!"  Wow, that just felt like a "here I am!!!" moment!

So it's been a weird couple days.  I've occupied my time cleaning out her drawers and packing her clothes to go to a shelter.  Going through my drawers as well... I don't know why, but this seems to be my coping mechanism.  I really dug deep and tossed and donated tons of shit after Mark died.  It kept me focused on other things.  Too much "still" time can make grief really hard.  You have to keep moving or you can really get stuck in it!  I don't go back to work until next week, and then we have the plant sale the first weekend in May, and the farmer's market in Plattsmouth through the summer.  I will be fine!  And thank goodness for my every-day chat friend Marco.  

So today, I cleaned out drawers in the upstairs bathroom.  Boy do I feel like I accomplished something!  There was so much shit jammed in there, and so much I needed to toss.  It took me about 2 hours.  And I spent the rest of the day getting plants outside.  I hope I don't regret it - now I hear we're going to have 3 or 4 nights down into the upper 30's next week.  Yikes!  They'll just have to tough it out!

So quickly, before I'm off to fix my supper, here is the pic I'm using in Mom's obit:

It's from a 1997 article in Omaha Woman magazine about the business.  And here is the obit I wrote:

Karen Kay (Bean) Eveland, 82, passed away peacefully at home in Omaha on April 25, 2023. Karen was born in Villisca, Iowa on April 22, 1941 to Dora and George Bean.  In August 1957, she married John Delaine Fredell and moved to the Fredell family farm north of Stanton until their divorce in 1974. 

She was preceded in death by her son, Wes Fredell; parents Dora and George Bean; sisters Verla and Rosalie. She is survived by sister Judy; daughters Denise Evans and Merry Hadfield (Rick); grandsons Brian Hadfield (Ann) and Jeremy Hadfield (Kara); great-grandchildren Ella, Will, Henry, Winston and Poppy.

Karen is a beloved soul who will be missed by many. She has been a faithful mother figure, friend, confidant, and inspiration to many. She took most pride in being a mother, but she was also a successful business woman.  She started a catering business she dubbed “Karen’s Kitchen” in 1984 which she transformed into a full-service event planning and venue called “Karen’s Fireside” in Omaha and ultimately in Papillion, NE. 

Her wish was to be cremated with no immediate service, and an all-out party a few months after. We will announce this to all who knew her when plans are made! Please join us in celebrating the joy of her new adventure!

This is the long version I hope to put in the Villisca Review - that's where she was born and raised, Villisca, Iowa.  And Dad's family farm, where I grew up, is a few miles from Villisca - our address was a Villisca rural route address.  The Omaha World Herald charged $420 for the short version!  I'll insert what Villisca charges when I hear back from them...Update:  it was a whopping $20 to put it in the Villisca paper!

Off to cook supper!

 

Today...

Tues. 3/21:  Worked my ASS off today...  I worked on those bhutanica cuttings.  I got the rootball out of the old pot and filled it with new soil, stuffed as many of the nicest cuttings as I could into the old pot as possible, then started potting up the leftover cuttings.  They made 23 pots!!  Whoa... I wasn't expecting that!  But I'll have plenty of opportunity to sell them this summer between on-line sales and the Plattsmouth farmer's market.  I'm anxious to see how that goes...

Fri. 3/24:  I didn't get back to this as I had planned.  But I got a lot done.  I filled up those new shelves to overflowing with cuttings.  I have a little space in one flat on the second shelf, which I just added 4 cuttings of onychoides to.  And I have a few more spots on the bottom shelf.  Next I'm going to take down the macgillivrayii and take some cuttings off of it.  My thought is taking some cuttings early like this will hopefully inspire both of those late-starters to kick in and start groing early.  I sure wish I could inspire both of them to bloom!!

Today, I'm starting on the newsletter, so I will be bouncing back and forth between that, blogging and working on watering and cuttings.  On Wednesday, I was watering and came across my pot of Drimiopsis botyroides that's been in dire need of unpotting, separating and potting up individually.  I've been thinking I would do this with several of my SA bulbs that are really over-running me.  My thought was that it would be a good time to sell them at the Men's Club event in May, and whatever's left can go to the farmer's market.  Well, I got the clump out of the pot and discovered there are probably 100 or more bulbs in there, stacked 3 deep!  So I ordered 200 tiny 2" pots and they should be here today.  It's going to be a real chore, but I looked it up and I see that there are places selling those exact bulbs for $10 to $18 apiece!  Sheesh - I'd be perfectly happy to get a couple bucks for each one!

Just got done taking cuttings from macgillivrayii - I got 14 potted up!  I really whacked it back.  I figure I have two more smaller ones and I don't need so many.  And I can make good money on that one.

And the 2" pots came, so I started on those Drimiopsis bulbs.  I think I estimated pretty close - I got 49 of them potted up and it looks like I got through about half of them.  I'm exhausted!  I'll finish them tomorrow and have a firm number then.  I really need to "move out" last year's plants to make room!!  But now it's at least starting to get warm during the day, so I'll probably just put the Drimiopsis bulbs out every day until it's warm enough to leave them out...

3/25:  I finished potting up the Drimiopsis bulbs - they made 89 pots and probably half of them had 2 bulbs, and a few 3, so there were way more than a hundred!  And that doesn't count the 14 Schizobasis bulbs that were in there as well.  Let me correct that - 14 POTS of Schizobasis bulbs.  Some of those pots had more than one as well...  I put them outside again today, so in the next 6 weeks, they should get to looking pretty terrific and hopefully even grow.  Oh, and that number didn't include the 4 biggest bulbs I put in a pot to keep for myself!

I also repotted the Hoya monetteae into a deep/tall cermic pot.  It's going to be a crazy heavy plant.  And guess what?  It has new growth!  I'm so pumped - is has a set of baby leaves forming on one side of the node, and another (what looks like) single leaf forming on the other side of the node.  

Last Sunday, I got several plants at Bedwell's in Des Moines when the cactus club had their meeting there.  One was a huge Albuca spiralis bulb!  It was in a hanging pot (stupid) so I took it out and put it in a clay pot, hoping that will help it dry out between waterings.  It has a nice "head" of curly-cues and a flower spike.  It's a nice one!  Cost $20, but I'd say that's not that bad for it's size.  The bulb itself is about 4" in diameter! (The pot is a 6" pot...)

It takes a LOT of sun to keep the leaves curly, so I put it on the top shelf in the GH and will put it outside as soon as it's warm enough.

I also got a Crassula I've never heard of - C. orbiularis v. Rolularis.  A very strange plant! It was in full bloom, lots of dainty flower spikes with a little ball of flowers dangling at the top.  The flowers are pretty much done now, but I got a good pic of the plant:

What's really weird about it is that it gets all this additional growth in the center.  I picked one that didn't have all the extra growth in the center so I could watch it form.  It almost looks like it's spitting out pups right in the middle of the plant!  And I notice it looks like it MAY have a baby plant on one of the flower spikes!  Very odd...

3/26:  Today is snowing!  I won't be able to put all those baby bulbs out today, that's for sure.  Though they are predicting it will reach 41, so it will likely melt off pretty quickly.

 

4/6: Obviously, I didn't get back to this and a lot has happened since that very brief post on 3/26.  The Friday before the 26th, Mom had an MRI to determine the size of the cancer mass.  Then the next Monday, she had a PET scan to determine if the cancer had spread.  On Tuesday, we had a follow up the the radiation oncologist to go over the results of the PET scan - she has the anal cancer and cancer in one of her lungs.  Ever since her surgery (her colostomy), she's had this problem with food going down.  Not a problem with swallowing, mind you, but it's as if it's getting "stuck" halfway down.  It had gotten to the point that she couldn't eat anything solid.  As it turns out, they said that the cancer in her lung is pressing against her esophagus and kind of squeezing it closed.  She can take tiny drinks and get a little down, but she has to be very careful to give each drink time to go all the way to her stomach or it "piles up" and causes great pain.  She's pretty miserable when this happens.  So as a result, she just isn't eating anything solid at all, and she isn't drinking much either.  

So today, she started on hospice.  The nurse comes Monday and a "helper"... someone who can help her with showers and other needs... will come on Thursday.  We are able to increase visits as the process goes along and we need more help.  They are such amazing people - I can't say enough about the kindness and supportive nature of the people in hospice.  I think it will give Mom some peace of mind to know that they are here for us... and I do mean US.  I think she worries about how this will effect me, but I just want her to have an easy journey into her transition.  I don't want it to be hard for her.  I mean, it hasn't been easy, these last few months, and I'm just grateful she's here and I can help her through this.  And I don't want her to worry about me.  When she came to live with me a year ago (yes, it's already been a year!!!), my gut told me that she wasn't far from her transition.  I had seen some very big changes in the way she moves, her steadiness, her eating habits.  Maybe if she had come to live with me sooner it would have delayed the process a little... I guess we'll never know.  I'm just glad she's here now.

Ok, so on to my favorite distraction... plants.  Last Sunday, my cactus club went to Lincoln to a couple nurseries for a "field trip."  It was a fun day.  I bought a few plants and a few pots - managed to spend about $75!  Urban Trails is a really nice nursery.  Very well kept, very organized, lot's of variety, plants well tagged though not always accurate (as with most little nurseries).  The other one we went to, Oak Creek, has more tropicals, more common stuff, a few Hoyas, again often mislabeled, not as organized and not as well kept.  But a nice place.  

There's so much going on with my Hoyas, it's hard to know where to start!  My shepherdell  hasn't grown much in a couple years and not only that, it started losing leaves last fall and shed quite a few over the winter.  It wasn't a bunch at once.  It's just each week, I'd find two or three on the floor, or a couple yellowing leaves on the plant.  I was worried it was not going to make it through the winter.  Then it stopped about a month or two ago.  And now I find 5 or 6 super tiny leaves right up close the the soil line.  Absolutely NOTHING on any of the hanging stems.  But I'd rather have them up close to the soil line anyway because it makes the plant look fuller.  I'm excited!

The top photo is the biggest leaf.  All the others look like the bottom photo.  Very tiny, very fragile.  

This morning, I discovered my meredithii (formerly vitellinioides) has a tiny new pair of leaves and (hopefully) a vine.  I took 4  cuttings of it last fall because some of the leaves had, for some reason, developed crispiness along the edges.  I have one more leaf I need to remove from the plant for it to look pristine again, but I've been procrastinating...

 

It's even more exciting when I see it blown up like that!

And I'm off to see how Mom is doing and if she needs anything... More soon.