Best Ankle Milestone!

(1) The Day I Got The Cast off, and (2) The Day I Could Walk, and (3) The Day I Could Ditch The Compression Boot were all REALLY EXCITING, but (4) The Day I Am Dismissed From Care is surely the most exciting of all!

I have just gotten back from the orthopedist's office. They said I was healing great, the bone was filling in nicely, and the PA said in particular that my range of motion was A-MAY-ZING! She said she had never before seen anyone with my range of motion when at my state of healing, so I was doing awesome! She also said I should cut back on wearing the ankle brace and only wear it when walking the dogs or on uneven ground. I've now been dismissed from future follow-up appointments and been pronounced an Independent Person Who Needs No More X-Rays.

However, since I'm still healing, I think I still need to eat extra cheese. In fact, just to be on the safe side, I may need to eat more cheese than most people for the rest of my life.

I'd take a photo of my Awesome Ankle, but I've got some unsightly eczema around the incision site. The Internet says it's because the area is flooded with histamines doing their healing thing, and my skin is overcompensating in an allergy-like way. I've got it under control with topical creams though.

So here are some miscellaneous, non-ankle photos for you to enjoy.

Here is a dog couchal photo from yesterday morning. Right now, Thistle is on the floor in front of the fan, and Cricket is sunbathing in the yard because of course she is.

I took this photo the other day when it was I think 85 degrees F? I think Cricket is nuts.

When it hit 90, she finally moved to the shade.

Look! I grew a Cthulhu tomato!

Here is a phenomenon that I was not sure whether was new. A friend of mine who was born and raised in Fairbanks, then moved Outside for a few years, then returned home two years ago, said she didn't recall them from before she left. Multiple heads on a single fireweed stalk! This one has fourteen!

The gentle rolling hills of this trail system have been great for my ankle rehab. And it's all in the shade, although still hot. Too hot! I hope it cools down soon!

Summer continues..

The fireweed is not only exceptionally prolific, but really tall this year!

View from one bedroom window:

And then the other:

By the way, Alaskan realtors don't consider this a "view". A "view" means to the mountains or of a river. However, this view suits me just fine. :D In cities, you can have a view of your neighbor's house, or of a wall, or of a dumpster, so I'm definitely okay with this view!

Also, I planted two new rhubarbs this year since a friend was thinning his, so I figured what the heck, since they don't require any labor. You aren't supposed to harvest them the first year, so they put all of their energy into making good roots. But this one is blocking sunshine from my pansies!

A fitting end to the Broken Fibula saga: I took the giant scrub pants that they gave me in the hospital post-surgery (since I couldn't get my pants back on over my cast) and made them into a pillowcase for a couch pillow. (I'm leaving that pocket there; maybe I'll use it for snacks, or maybe I'll leave naughty notes to DL in it, or something). The crutches, the boot, and the shoe-lifter are in the back of the closet. I'm now walking with a light ankle brace. My only two limitations now are (1) I can't run (which is fine! I'm just glad I can walk.) and (2) I only have two pairs of shoes I can wear comfortably, and neither is water proof. So... I have been doing some trail walking, but have to stop if we encounter a big puddle or a muddy patch. I'm doing pretty well though!

Look what season it is! Oh yes!

The wild raspberries in our yard have also been very prolific.

One of our local hardware stores has mandated vaccines for all of their employees! AIH has always been my favorite hardware store, and now that place is cemented for sure. Anyway, look what I found there! A tool pouch that is perfect for a berry bucket! I also recently got a neoprene belt for bear spray that makes it much easier to grab quickly in case of Big Animal encounters; so the bucket holder clips on the other side!

Oh yeah!

Berry stains and Cricket snuggles! I think my new pants are properly broken in!

On the first cool day in a while, I took the liberty of making a classic strawberry-rhubarb pie:

Mmmmm Pie!

Do you think they are comfy? I sure hope they are comfy.

Oh, but they jump up to share canteloupe with me!

Miscellaneous photo dump

The fireweed is very beautiful!

Cricket is comfy. Also, it finally got hot enough that she came inside of her own will yesterday (85 degrees F). Let us hope we do not experience any more of those temperatures!

Thistle is comfy. She is Not Interested in laying out in the sun.

I splurged and got this fancy-ass Yumi Watermelon. It cost a dollar a pound! But look how beautiful it is! And it was so crisp, so sweet, so perfect!

Awww Cricket was being cute!

Sometimes in the evenings, Miss Thistle wants to hang out in the yard nowadays. But still not in the daytime heat!

My little fruit bat would like to know, "Iz there any more froot?"

Summer days

This is why I plant only my tiny Lazy Person's Garden™. My CSA share provides most of our veggies, and God provides most of our beauty.

I still remember my first fireweed. I photographed it along the Alcan as I was moving up to Alaska. 15 years later, I am still amazed at how prolific they are. They look far too luxurious to be that profligately sprinkled. If you were only to see one, you'd definitely guess that it was a rare, exotic thing.

Mung beans for hot weather! I found them amung the dry goods at the Asian grocery store.

Also jiu-cai. Mmmm... What shall I make with them?

And look what has appeared in the yard! Raspberries!

Wowee!

Oh my goodness!

The summer intern that I'm supervising is an electrical engineering student who hasn't yet taken the last semester of physics, so I--with Cricket's supervision--got to be the person to tell him that the speed of light is invariant with respect to frame of reference! At one point he asked, "Wait light is a wave that can go through a vacuum... so what is waving?" and we got to discuss the Michelson–Morley experiment as well. (If he had been born 120 years ago, he might've been one of the great physicists of the era, but alas, Bohr and Einstein and them already beat him to it.) We also got to talk about gravitational lensing and Snell's Law and a bunch of other stuff.

It reminded me of a newspaper column I read pre-pandemic in which the author described taking his 13-year-old niece to see Romeo and Juliet performed in a theater. The girl was in suspense the whole time, and cried at the end! I sometimes wish I could experience Romeo and Juliet for the first time, just like I think it would be really awesome to learn about special relativity for the first time.

Is this why other middle-aged people take up extreme sports? Because there are fewer and fewer things we can experience for the first time? I'm very risk-averse and not interested in extreme sports, but arts and literature are always being created, so I will always have that.

Dog Diversity

Contemplative dog:

Squeezy dog:

Notes from Here and There

It's been hot. Very hot. Miserably hot.

Cricket still wanted to lay in the sun until temperatures topped 90F, then she moved to the shade.

However, when it got to 95F, I called her inside. It was making me too hot to look at her out there.

She didn't object too much.

I did think of one way to deal with cooking in the heat--make our starch in the morning! I cannot abide boiling pots of pasta, nor a rice cooker, these evenings. Potato salad!

Pasta salad!

My first time doing this particular part of my Giant Rubber Band Leg Recovery exercises without a Mysterious and Disturbing Popping occurring deep in my ankle. The doctor said it would go away in time, and he was correct!

My Lazy Person's Garden™ is still looking very pretty:

Maybe even more so from this angle!

This is my favorite color columbine, and it's well-established now!

The first fireweed have begun to arrive!

Look at this crazy delphinium! I wonder what happened to it.

Cilantro and basil:

Future tomatoes:

Sage and thyme:

These wee tiny alpine phlox show up in the front yard every year and make my heart smile.

Even in the summer heat, Cricket is the Best Snuggler!