Five things

My friend Sarah has been tagged again. I still haven't figured out how to tag people or to show their websites here. But I thought the latest tag was interesting. It went in fives, five things you like to eat, five things you don't like about yourself, five places you have lived, five books you have read recently.

So, five things I like to eat:
1. melon
2. fried eggs
3. anything with garlic
4. sweets (forbidden, alas to diabetics like me)
5. well prepared steak

five things I don't like about me:
1. lazy
2. getting older, weaker in both muscle and head
3. self centered
4. dirty old man (well, I'm not sure I don't like it, but it makes young people nervous)
5. writing has stopped and can't start it again

five places I have lived:
1. Newark, New Jersey
2. St. Louis, Missouri
3. Kontum, Vietnam
4. Paris, France
5. Little Rock, Arkansas

five places I really like:
1. London, England
2. Vienna, Austria
3. St. Malo, France
4. Chicago, Illinois
5. Most of the American west

five books I have read:
1. "The Cadillac Desert"
2. "The Great Influenza"
3. "Riviera to the Rhine"
4. "One Good Knight"
5. "The Annotated Hobbit"

Once again, into the breach...

It's been quite a while since I visited myself here.
At the beginning of May, I was found to have a perforated bowel. The surgeon began cutting about two hours after I was diagnosed. Since then, I've either been in hospital or too tired to write. As the recovery progresses, my energy comes back and I find more energy... and more things to say.
Belly surgery such as I had takes more out of a person than just the energy to do things. It cuts into dignity and privacy. I have a temporary colostomy. For the next three months or so, I'll be pooping out a new hole in my stomach. That involves more than a quick wipe with toilet paper. I have to empty the bag, clean it up and deodorize it before I can finish. It also requires a new position at the "throne of the porcelain God." Instead of sitting, I kneel, appropriate for a worshipper.
Changing the bag is done a couple of times a week. It involves removing the old bag and seals with a special adhesive remover, cleaning the area of my belly thoroughly and, sometimes, shaving it so the next removal will go more painlessly. In the mean time, I pass gas through every orifice connected to the gastrointestinal tract. One time, I felt like I was urinating a soda that someone had shaken up. Odd, but not unpleasant.
I thought that spending most of my time in bed would offer the relaxation to think and ponder. Not so. I've been sleeping and concentrating on just what I have to learn to do in order to stay clean and healthy.
My memory must be going bad. I do not recall this much trouble after I was wounded 40 years ago.
The garden is doing well this spring and yesterday, the first day I was allowed out, I took a bunch of pictures of the flowers that were blooming. While I was doing that, my wife and daughter were planting dozens more. I hope that I'll be able to walk to the place they were planted before they quit blooming.
Some of my friends have sent cards or flowers. Some have not. Of course, I did not publish a press release to announce that surgeons were rearranging my waste disposal system, so some have not gotten the word. 'Twill be interesting to see who, if anyone says something when I am finally permitted to travel.

Denvention (the world science fiction convention) is scheduled for this August. I'm particularly anxious to attend this year since many of my European friends only come near that one time.
If you have never attended an SF con, this would be a great one to begin. While it will be quite large, there will be many of the writers and artists that are widely admired coming there. There are terrific bid parties at "Worldcons". Various cities promote themselves as sites for future conventions. SF fans are a friendly lot. It's easy to get involved in the various panels that range from design and use of ancient weapons to current plans for the exploration of our universe.

How does your garden grow, Part III

Okay, here's the hardy orchid.

One of these days I'll even figure out how to put multiple photos in the same post with captions. But for now, this will have to suffice.

How does your garden grow, Part II

Oh darn!

I clean forgot that I wanted to post a couple of pictures showing the flowers. The Indian blanket flower is at the top left. The hardy orchid will be shown in Part III.

How does your garden grow

It's our Earthday celebration in Little Rock. I know that the actual day was Tuesday, but since most people worked or were in school, we moved ours to the weekend. After I returned from the events held in the garden of the President Clinton Library, I was pumped up to discover that one of our wildflowers had decided to open. That was the Indian blanket flower.

When I looked around some more, I found hardy orchids as well.

Our garden has plenty of flowers, pansies, Russian sage, corral bells, hyssop, knockout roses and others. But these are special to me since they are native to this area. We transplanted the orchids from a friend's garden for just that reason.

We've been studying what Arkansas was like before Europeans came. It was part of the great prairie which extended from Mexico into Canada and from the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains to somewhere in Ohio. It wasn't all plains with tall blue stem grass. There were different zones from a sort of caliche to wetlands. A naturalist told me that when studied one acre of land that had been left unplowed, he found over 500 species of plants. We have only a few areas of prairie left here in Arkansas. Farther west, the states have left more land since the natural prairie is good for grazing cattle.

We went to Colorado early this month and saw huge tracts of prairie that had been burnt off. This is necessary to keep it prairie and go germinate certain plants that need a fire to burn off protective husks. The fires had been pretty well contained, but it was amazing (to me) seeing four or five miles of burned prairie on my right, then another several miles on the left, then right... well, you get the idea.

Tagged

I've been tagged. There seem to be some rules for this game.
1 link to the person who tagged you.
2 post the rules on your blog. Done
3 write six random things about yourself.
4 tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5 let each person know by leaving a message at their blog.
6 let your tagger know when your entry is up.

So far, so good. But I have absolutely no idea of how to establish a link. Alas, the "help" area seems to think that Everyone knows about these things and gives no comprehensible instructions about linking. BUT, I'm going to do what I can and hope that someone knowledgeable will take pity on me with regard to links.

Random facts about me:
1 My hair is quite gray and short.
2 My office is a mess which will require power equipment to clear.
3 I have a huge stack of books in my TBR (to be read) pile.
4 I hardly ever buy something because it's new. Usually I wait until the one I have stops working to look for a new one.
5 I like hockey and volleyball as a spectator. But I'm not what you call a fan.
6 The last cd I bought was a recording of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons".

Links: TBA... when I learn how to make them.

Today started foggy and rainy. But the garden was wonderful. The daffodils had come and gone. In their place were hundreds of jonquils, white and yellow, smelling marvelous. Adding to the perfume were lavender (something we were told could not be grown in Arkansas) and wisteria.

Most of the day was spent in meetings with educational content. There was a rose seminar attached to lunch, then a talk on the wild flowers of Arkansas with a dessert afterwards.

Of course, I caught up on the gossip that I had missed while I was traveling. There were stories about the tornado damage and its effects on my friends. There were actually ten tornados that touched down in the Little Rock area. All were EF1 or 2. That's plenty of wind enough to damage houses. But the main problems were caused by trees and their limbs taking down power lines. Many neighborhoods were without electricity for over 15 hours.