A little green memory prod

My garden contains a variety of plants, but none could be more exotic than the pitcher plant.

Charlotte reads aloud

During grand-daughter Charlotte's recent weekend with us, I observed her practising what we used to call 'pre-reading' activities. (God knows what this is called now, given the speed with which educational jargon comes and goes.)

Charlotte loves to put things into containers, then get them out again. And she will happily do this for long periods. On this visit I gave her a set of my discarded plant labels, and put them into a little straw handbag. At first she simply loaded and unloaded the labels from bag to table, doing this over and over. And she walked around with the handbag on her arm, in a distinctively queenly manner.

 

A quiet morning

The walking iris all flowered at the same time last week, but only for a day. Today they are flowering again, but they'll be finished tomorrow. Never mind. It's a glorious treat for 24 hours.

I sat here with my tea to absorb their delicate beauty (not yet on show when this picture was taken). But I could not stay for long.

Sewing for my sinhs!

Continuing on from yesterday's post, here are a couple of completed projects from my home furnishings sewing lab!

First, a set of triple-pinch-pleated drapes made for grand-daughter Charlotte's first bedroom. These are made of a very heavy cotton and lined with block-out fabric to encourage daytime napping!

My Prufrock afternoons

Waking on a Monday morning to warm sunshine and a house freshly cleaned (no qualms here about having worked on the Sabbath) – what could be nicer, eh?

Today I plan to do something I have rarely done. I plan to sew during daylight hours. All my adult life I've been a sew-er. To call myself a 'seamstress' is to claim a professionalism I don't quite deserve, though even if I say so myself, I have learned to sew to a pretty high standard after 50 years of doing it; and to write that I'm a 'sewer' (without the hyphen) may be equally misleading (except perhaps to my ex-husband). So let's just say: I sew.

Reality bites

The fifth annual Reality Bites festival of nonfiction literature was held last weekend here at our beautiful Cooroy Library on the Sunshine Coast. In past years I was a member of the Sunshine Hinterland Writers Centre committee that organises the festival each year, and an enthusiastic volunteer helping out at festival events. This year, however, the progression of Allen's condition made it too difficult for me to attend committee meetings, usually held in the evenings. And then when Allen was hospitalised with pneumonia in January, I had to give up any involvement in festival preparations. But as festival time rolled around, one of the women who has been a key organiser of each year's festival and who knew I'd have liked to remain involved asked if I might be able to do some of the catering for events on three successive days of the weekend festival.

"Let us go then you and I..." *

Oh dear. No posts since the end of May. Well, yes, Allen's been sick with a nasty bronchial infection. And then we've had more than six weeks of twice-weekly visits to the doctor for dressings on Allen's foot, where the removal of a small skin cancer left a deep hole that a skin graft didn't succeed in closing. Both those issues seem now to be on the mend, though not finished. Then there've been several visitors, including grandson Sam during his school holidays, my daughter and grand-daughter for a weekend and a very dear old friend for our traditional winter get-together to share glasses of wine while watching stages of Le Tour de France. (She flew home this morning. But will Cadel win again this year? Fingers crossed please.) None of that really excuses what has really been (yet more) laziness on my part, but...... 

I have been busy in the garden – more than ably assisted by a trusty handyman who is the person responsible for recent massive weed eradication (which was underway when I last posted), then heavy mulching of many garden areas and various other useful tasks. For my part I've been repotting bromeliads to make a nice little 'brom walk' between house and studio. I'm very pleased with the results. These plants were all gifts from our children or from one of the couples in our aphasia group, who have a massive collection. They all did well last year and so I've separated pups and replanted in the recommended friable mixture, with lots of gravel at the bottom of each pot for good drainage. By next year I hope to again double the number of plants.


You might remember in my last post I mentioned that my neighbour had come round and cut back a dozen or so lilly pillies growing on a hillside above our house. These small native evergreens had grown into tall little trees whose foliage was overhanging the carport and making a mess in the rainwater gutters.

Well all that area has now been well mulched, and the beautiful new growth on the lilly pilly trunks is coming in, the glossy little leaves all red or red-tinged – this new growth being one of the most pleasing features of these plants. Soon there'll again be enough cover to attract the whip birds that often patrol this patch of garden.


On the western side of the house the frangipani (or plumeria) that shade us from the heat of the summer's setting sun have just about finished dropping their leaves for the wintertime. But as beautiful as these trees are when clothed in their big summertime leaves and fragrant flowers, there's something just as lovely about the naked winter boughs, especially when seen on a cold and misty afternoon such as this one.

And speaking of mist, what magic it works on the various greens and blue-greens that seem to dominate at this time of year. Here on my front terraces, everything (rosemary, gardenias, lime tree, palms down near the pool and even the old washing copper that Walle drinks from) has taken on a different hue in the light of an unusually foggy late afternoon. I'm reminded of scenes from deserted temple gardens in northern Vietnam where we once spent a holiday during a cold, wet month much like this one.

None of this worries Walle, of course, who happily goes about his doggy business in any weather whatsoever. ("Now where did I bury that bone?") I got tired of having to wipe down his soggy legs and comb the grass seeds out of his shaggy coat, and so at his recent haircut I had him trimmed right back, much to the horror of the lovely and patient lady groomer who no doubt thinks labradoodles deserve more appreciative and long-suffering owners!

Walle himself doesn't mind, however. He's happily practising his sphinx pose, hoping for a slot on the next Christmas card. But I think I'll have to let him grow back a more shapely mane before then, as befits the breed.

Well this has been a grab-bag of goodies. But if it helps me get back the habit of reflecting on and sharing some of what makes life worth living up here in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, then I hope my friends will indulge me a little.

(* "Let us go then you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table..." No particular relevance to this post, but I found the opening lines of this poem well evoke the misty late afternoon light and mood that was around when I took most of these garden photos. Go here to read all of The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.)

Tidying up – on a large scale

Candle banksia flower goes
from yellow to brown with age

I'm using Ms Gillard's carbon-tax top-up for age pensioners to hire someone to help me with the heavier work of reversing too many months of neglect in the garden. (Sorry, my US readers. It's too hard to explain at length what that phrase means. Let's just say we Social Security types are being reimbursed for some of charges that are likely to be heaped onto various good and services, under the pretext that our incoming Carbon Tax warrants these extra costs.) We haven't even received the Prime Minister's donation into our bank account yet and already I've spent it!

Anyway, for the past three weeks I've had 'my guy' in to do 4 or 5 hours of heavier garden tasks. One week he totally weeded and trimmed the hilly bank on the bottom side of the swimming pool terrace, then sprayed the remaining stalks of this very invasive climbing vine with a strong weedkiller. This is what a badly weed-covered section of garden looks like beforehand. The head of a 6ft tall pony tail palm had totally disappeared under these sticky vines, which had climbed up into surrounding palms too. Anyone know the name of this nasty weed? Anyway, for the moment we are rid of it, but I'll have to keep at it as new weed shoots sprout in the spring. We aren't likely to have caught every piece of this vine and its little beans, so some seeds will have been dispersed anew to start another year's crop.

Anyway, the following week Nev spread a thick layer of sugar cane mulch over that entire poolside hill, and also on the hill above the house and carport (picture below), where a few weeks ago neighbour Robbi had kindly trimmed back a half dozen lanky trees – mainly lilly pilly –  which had been overhanging the house's gutters. These are already showing sprouts of the lovely reddish-tinged new foliage that is such an appealing feature of this family of evergreen natives. But unfortunately for the possums, this year they won't be able to race through the boughs and leap onto the roof on this side.

It's just great to see that my agapanthus, which started out as just a few scattered bulbs, have now spread to line the outside edge of the pool fence thickly. These plants are soft enough not to be considered a violation of pool safety, as they can't provide a foothold for curious children trying to climb the fence. And the palms which Allen and I planted about 10 years ago are big enough to provide summer shade on this side of the pool – but they're positioned within the regulation distance from the top of the pool fence.

This week among other things Nev has cut right back all of the messy growth on another sloping terrace - this one between the house's back verandah and the poolside pump-house. That area's more stubborn weed stems have also been spot-sprayed. But there's more work to be done here. I haven't decided whether to keep the spiky mother-in-law's tongue (in the red oval) – I may move them to a large pot, as they look great clustered together that way. The mother-of-millions, however, is a weed (in the yellow oval) and definitely has to go. Next this area will be resprayed and mulched heavily prior to planting a collection of low-growing native shrubs (grevilleas mainly, to attract more birds).

I'm not usually a big sprayer, at least not in garden beds. I usually do the driveway, paths and fenceline a few times a year. But this year too many beds got away from me during Allen's illness, when I went months without having time or energy for any substantial gardening. Added to that we've just had the wettest spring, summer and autumn in a long, long time. And winter isn't proving as dry as usual either. In this climate weeds can grow six feet while your back is turned, and for me at least, there's no alternative to spraying for some persistent problem weeds.

While Nev has been tackling the big jobs, I've been doing my bit on smaller areas like this little triangular patch near the pool gate, where a pair of orange hibiscus gives a dazzling display all summer long. The third shrub here behind the hibiscus is not very evident in this photo, but it's a Brazilian cherry (Eugenia uniflora). I had planted one on the terrace above in the hope of doubling my supply of this wonderful jam-making fruit. Unfortunately, the new bush has borne very little fruit, unlike the original bush down in the paddock, which bears heavily for a long period every year (see the last two photos in this post from November 2010.) But it has spread a number of seedlings in the vicinity, including one in this triangular patch, behind the hibiscus. I've cut that right back and will probably take it out completely, as I strongly suspect this is a very invasive shrub in our environment. However, the reddish-brown tinge on its leaves are also very appealing, as you can see in that 2010 post.

Yesterday evening I finished up by repotting half a dozen bromeliads, and sinking these into the mulch on the little garden bed that borders the path to the studio. I hadn't yet done that when this photo was taken the day before, so I'll show those in a later post. What this photo celebrates, though, is the fact that all of the 'dirty palms' along this path are now tall enough so that the dead fronds are above eye-level! I would never have planted this variety of palm (Alexander palms). They were here when we bought the house in 1996 and by the time I realised I would like to be rid of them, their removal would have cost thousands. So I live with them and have tried to create a little rainforest beneath them. For those who aren't familiar with tropical greenery, the bottom fronds of all palms die off as new fronds form at the top of the growing plant. In so-called dirty palms, however, the dead fronds remain attached for a very long time until eventually they will come crashing down. Clean palms, however, such as those we planted around the pool, drop their dead fronds immediately. Hence they never have the messy look of dirty palms. But though I deplore the long dead fronds that dangle around the trunks of the Alexander palms for months, at least these palms are now tall enough so that the dead fronds are out of sight as you walk down the path. And I must admit, a wonderful collection of wildlife comes to feed on the palm flowers and fruit throughout the year. So I've come to accept this little ecosystem as one of the untidier by-products of a green living space.

To socialise or not!

Yesterday we went to a neighbourhood party. The occasion was the 87th birthday of a lovely man who is something of a local icon. Like many around here, we are genuinely fond of Dudley, who is a friend to everyone and who spends his mornings eradicating weeds from surrounding bushland, as his contribution to maintaining an environment that he loves. In the afternoon he usually calls in to one or another of our houses for a bit modest socialising. He never stays long, but likes to keep in touch with us all. But the point of my post today is not how deserving Dudley is of being feted by neighbours, for he certainly is and I'm only too happy to acknowledge that. No, my point is that even though we have the highest regard for our friend, I don't think I will subject Allen, or me, to any more such parties with casual acquaintances.

Before we left home yesterday, Allen went through his various 'I have aphasia' cards and selected the one that he thought contained the best message for the occasion. He put this card in his pocket so it would be handy. And he promised me he would produce it when trying to talk to anyone, to help explain his difficulty in communicating and show that he wanted to keep trying.

We live in a friendly neighbourhood, but each house sits on one or more acres of land. This is a hinterland location and there are no footpaths. The meandering road goes up and down hills. People don't walk along our road very much, except to exercise their dog if they don't have a fenced area around their house. So we don't regularly see our neighbours, except when checking the mail or passing each other in cars. We know most of them by sight or from occasional short conversations near a mailbox. Dudley, who visits us all regularly, is something like our town crier, passing on news from house to house. But we've been here since 1996 so by now most of our neighbours know something about the fact that Allen isn't capable of independent living, that he has had a long hospitalisation and that I'm now his carer. I think a few assume he's got dementia or Alzheimer's. We aren't close enough for me to disabuse them of such ideas, but I do try to provide appropriate information whenever the opportunity arises. And for many years until her death, Dudley cared for his own spouse, who did have Alzheimer's. So he, at least, is no stranger to our situation.

Ours is probably the most modest house in the area. Houses across the street sit atop a kind of ridge which offers fabulous views up and down the coast, about 10km away. In the last 10 years most of those properties have been expanded or redeveloped and have sold for between one and three million dollars. So we aren't exactly in the same financial situation as many of our neighbours. We don't belong to local golf or tennis clubs, and we don't regularly travel interstate or internationally as many of them do. All of these things probably contribute to there being a bit of a gulf between 'us' and 'them'. But I doubt if anything contributes more to that gulf than Allen's inability to talk and socialise, and other people's inability, or unwillingness, to try and bridge that gulf.

Allen spent most of the afternoon party sitting by himself, or with me. Most guests said hello to him, and a few asked 'How are you?'. But that's as far as these conversations ever got before people moved away. Allen certainly never got the chance to show his aphasia card, explaining why he was having trouble communicating. I've never been much of a party-goer myself, but Allen was always a very sociable person and would once have been right in his element in any group of this sort. Now it's just too painful for me to watch as conversations pass him by. He can't even get pleasure from listening, because unless people take the trouble to speak slowly and clearly, he won't be able to follow the discussion. I'm not sure it's as difficult for him as it is for me to see that happen. He may be a bit more oblivious and happy to just observe the flow. I tried to question him about this afterwards, but of often happens I couldn't get a clear picture of how he felt.

We have another lunchtime party coming up in a few weeks. These midday affairs are the only kind of parties I would subject Allen to, as noisier night-time gatherings fuelled by alcohol are definitely beyond both us now. But lately even daytime gatherings can be awkward. Any talk in an environment in which several conversations are going on at once is impossible for Allen to comprehend. But this next party is a very dear old friend's family event, celebrating her daughter's impending motherhood. Our girls were born at about the same time, and we've known each other since before their births. Besides, we have a lot more in common with this family and their friends, so there's more chance of 'connecting' in incidental conversation. (I had to laugh yesterday when I heard one guest ask another: "So, you still own that shopping centre?") There may also be more willingness to be inclusive, and to try and help Allen contribute in some way.

I don't want us to end up as hermits up here on our lovely little hilltop. But sometimes one can feel lonelier in a group of people than by oneself.

(Not) tasting the difference

This moussaka tasted a lot better than it looks here. When I saw lamb mince at the supermarket this week, I suddenly remembered making this dish quite often years ago. So I thought I'd give it another go. It's time-consuming: first cooking the meat sauce, next sprinkling the sliced eggplant with salt and draining it for an hour (though some newer recipes say not to bother with this) followed by quickly grilling (i.e. broiling) the slices, then thickening a white sauce and adding grated cheese and egg – and finally assembling the lot and baking for an hour.

Lately Allen and I have been eating very simple meals. Several times a week, I don't even cook but just grab something like a frozen chicken pie, baked beans or even porridge with trimmings on colder evenings. Allen seems unconcerned as long as there's something on his plate around tea-time. Though he used to enjoy good food as much as I do, now he just doesn't seem to care what he eats. And certain textures give him trouble (e.g. some cuts of meat, stringy vegetables like spinach). So easily managed foods hold more appeal than tasty dishes that are a challenge to handle or chew. Where he once appreciated and welcomed new flavours and spicy foods, now I have to give him much blander meals and add any interesting flavours to my portion only (anything hot, anything spicy etc.) The result is that I'm losing interest in cooking.

Allen couldn't remember ever eating moussaka, but he ate this whole portion. I had to cut up the slightly crusty top, as he's forgotten that knives are best used for cutting, not for pulling things apart with. I couldn't blame him too much for that, though, because my super-efficient oven does crisp up things a bit more than should happen at this temperature. However, the flavour, I thought, was exquisite: hints of nutmeg coming through the custardy topping and the eggplant and lamb such a wonderful combination. Allen's verdict, though, was less enthusiastic: "Different", was all he said when prompted for a reaction. And 'different' now is a polite way of saying 'can we not have it too often?' It's such a sad thing, this loss of good taste in food. Baked beans on toast would please him just as much, I'm sure. Maybe even more, as beans can easily be scooped up with a spoon. 

The gerontologist told me at Allen's annual check-up this year that the same part of the brain that governs speech also controls a good part of the chewing and swallowing functions. So whenever Allen has any health problems (a cold, his recent pneumonia etc.), we must immediately thicken all liquids as he's likely to ingest fluid into the lungs while trying to drink or eat. The swallowing and breathing functions are getting mixed up, it seems. I wonder if somehow this partly accounts for Allen's diminished interest in new and 'different' flavours. After all, if he's mainly concerned with 'Can I eat it OK?', he can't be too bothered about 'How does it taste?' Like so much else about this dreadful condition, the loss of good taste in food is a cruel blow.

You can't take it with you

Honestly, I would like to write deeper, more meaningful blogs. But then I'd have to lie about the pleasure I have found these past four days in emptying out, reorganising and refilling all my cupboards, wardrobes and storage chests!

The excuse was the need to get out our winter woollies. (We may live in the subtropics but the temp does get down to 10 degrees Centigrade on some nights!). Changing seasonal clothes requires me to pack away some of our summer shorts and Ts. Our small house doesn't have enough closet space to allow everything to be out at once. So even though we both have modest wardrobes – and like many stay-at-home retirees we usually only wear a fraction of what we own anyway – I have to pack and unpack a suitcase or two of off-season things twice a year to make room in our closets for all the current season's dags.

Poor Walle gets nervous whenever the cases come out, though. I don't know why because we've never left him home on our weekends away. But he had three years with his previous owners before we adopted him, so maybe his anxiety goes back to some earlier experiences with that former family. We adopted Walle from his original breeder after Walle's first owners returned him to her. (Part of the breeder's standard contract requires all dogs' first owners to let the breeder find a new home for any dog that an owner can't keep for any reason.) And the breeder did say the couple who'd owned Walle had split up in a difficult way. Maybe that entailed someone filling up suitcases and then leaving and not coming back? One can only speculate. Whatever the reason, Walle was taking no chances this time. So he spent much of the past few days occupying whatever open suitcase I left lying around.

My ulterior motive this week, while cleaning and reorganising closets, was simultaneously to prune and/or find new homes for some of the excess possessions I seem to have acquired over the years. I say 'I' because Allen long ago did this type of post-retirement pruning. Indeed, when he began discarding and giving away things, I remember being a bit miffed. I guess I was still in acquisition mode myself. And I felt he was somehow taking value away from our home. Not monetary value, but some other kind of value – sentimental value, perhaps. Now that I've reached that stage myself, with just a few exceptions (my first wedding veil, the nightie I wore when delivering my daughter, the outfit I made for taking her home from hospital and a few of her very favourite first toys) I don't find sentiment to be a suitable reason for retaining things. Sooner or later we are going to have to move from this 'acreage' to a more easily maintained environment. And our next (maybe final) home will probably be a two-bedroom unit or townhouse somewhere, with even less storage space. So every time I unpack and pack away a season's clothes and clean out closets and drawers, I keep an eye out for things I no longer need. (Truth be told, often these are things I never really needed in the first place, but at the time didn't realise that.)

I now get more pleasure from a sparsely stocked fridge or freezer than I once got from a laden pantry. I was about to buy a super-sized container of ketchup at the supermarket today, thinking how I could fill and refill my current bottle. But something stopped me. That would have made sense when we had one or two teenagers living at home still and ketchup was poured onto all sorts of meals in great dollops. But now the few cents I'd save by buying in bulk is nowhere near enough consolation for cluttering up my pantry with large containers that take months to use up. 'Less is best.' That's my new motto in shopping as in storage. (Olive oil is an exception, of course! We do use enough of that to warrant bulk buying.)

Last week I cleaned out my gardening bench and threw away all sorts of bits and pieces I'd been hording 'just in case' they could be useful. Out went the previous set of pruning and trimming utensils, not used for years since they were replaced with new ones. Out went assorted handles and even crooked old forks whose handles had broken off. I have two good forks and a few good shovels left. I don't need to keep the broken pieces of misshapen old ones, 'just in case'. I've got at least four broken wheelbarrows that need to go, too. Past attempts to grow flowers or plants in them have never been successful, as regular hand-watering no longer holds any appeal.

Buying just enough for us two (and knowing I'll use it all) – that gives me more pleasure now than bringing home mounds of extra foodstuff (and probably seeing 20 per cent or more go bad in the fridge). It's all quite a revolution in my thinking and acting. I was a pretty full-on consumer in my past lives. I still sometimes spend my fortnightly half-day-off-caring in a shopping centre. But now it's more for entertainment than anything else, except when I'm shopping for my new little grand-daughter (e.g. a one-metre toddlers' sleeping bag and several warm fleecy sleeping suits at Kathmandu last week, reduced by something like 75 per cent). But I rarely see things I'd like to buy for myself. And I don't look forward to receiving gifts any more either, as these are too likely to upset the balance in my plan for discarding frills and paring down to essentials. 

Hardest of all to prune are books! Allen got the ball rolling years ago by donating all his theatre books and his play collection to various individuals whom he thought would enjoy them. Now we are always on the look-out for similar opportunities. Knowing a book you've enjoyed will give someone else pleasure makes it easier to relinquish it. But as far as I'm concerned now, the only reasons that justify holding on to books are (1) you haven't found the right person to pass on an especially well-loved book to, (2) you think you might enjoy reading the book again – this holds for most of our small quality fiction collection (see photo), or (3) the book is too valuable to give away, so you feel you should sell it but you haven't found a buyer yet (or a really deserving fellow reader – back to (1) above!). Everything else is going OUT eventually. All the education books I kept from university days are right now sitting in a big bag in my car, about to be donated to the op-shop nearest the local teacher-training college. Or I might just drop them off in the college's entrance, with a sign saying: "Help youself to free books!" But are today's pragmatic teacher-trainees interested in reading Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, John Holt, Frank Smith, Jerome Bruner, Denys Thompson et al.? I doubt it.

Even more amazing than letting go the education books I read and studied, I'm about to donate 1.5 shelf-metres of educational publications I either edited or supervised as manager of this state's education department publishing unit for 10 years. The local university library has said they'd welcome this collection, as it represents a decade of syllabi, teachers' guides and other publications issued to our state's primary and secondary schools over a tumultuous period during which the curricula for most subjects were totally revised. I once thought it would be hard to let these go. But beautiful as many of the publications are – and our unit was probably the country's best and most prolific state educational publishing unit at that time – the fact is few of these books have any meaning for me any more. A couple of exceptions I'll keep, either because the content or the experience of developing and producing them was somehow out of the ordinary. But so much in education changes so fast, even if you're still interested in the subject (which, frankly, I'm not), publications from the 80s and 90s are now mainly of historical interest.



My mother (r.) says goodbye to her sister Viola
the day before Mum came to Australia.
The sisters never saw each other again.

Well, there you are. I think I always felt in some ways that my possessions told the story of my life. That feeling is gone now. Maybe my time as a volunteer in a nursing home had something to do with making me realise what few things we'll bother with once life gets reduced to the limits of a small room, as most of our lives probably will. I remember, too, my aged mother walking out of her apartment in America to come to Australia with me, taking only two suitcases and leaving my brother and sister to dispose of everything else. She knew she'd never see any of her things again, no matter what happened, as she could no longer live alone. I found that hard at the time to witness, but she said she no longer cared about 'things', and only cared about being with family. I am only now beginning to understand what she meant. "You can't take it with you" may sound trite. The fact is, we probably won't want to take it, or much of it, with us anyway. I'm pretty sure I won't.

Winter blooms

It's been so long since my last post that the blogger program has been totally revamped and I'm struggling to master the changes. So I'll keep this simple.

I'm just back from a quick tour of the garden, planning tomorrow's continued attack on two seasons of weed growth. But before my man Nev wades into the poolside vegetation to try and restore some order down there (and even perhaps a partial compliance with the laws re pool surrounds), I had to have a photo of this profusion of ixora that has taken over one section of pool fence. These will have to be cut back, of course, to prevent unsupervised toddlers from climbing up the branches and over the fence, thus gaining access to deep water while we careless adults guzzle white wine somewhere out of sight! But for the moment, the two plants are just a riot of rosey-orange balls. A yellow-flowering ixora nearby has no blooms right now, though it flowered well this summer.

And on the other side of the house, a small bougainvillea is likewise erupting in a riot of orange. This is a potted plant sitting with others on top of an inground water tank that doubles as a late afternoon platform for viewing sunsets. And like most bougainvillea, the more I neglect it, the better the flowers.

Reading and writing hurdles

Allen is working on one of the A4 sheets that the speech therapist gave him last week. This is a particularly tricky exercise for him. Sample item:

Something you can cut that is not grass:_______________________

He holds up a pair of scissors and asks me "What's this called again?" I point out that the question is not asking for something you can cut 'with', but rather, somethat that can be cut. (And how grateful I am that we don't have to get through the spelling of 'scissors'!) We settle on 'paper' as a suitable answer.

This type of question is very difficult for Allen. His aphasia is now at the point where it's not only speaking and writing that he's having trouble with. Grammar and syntax are also harder and harder for him to process. The negative twist (e.g. 'not') in this series of questions requires him to make a grammatical leap that is especially challenging. In both oral or written language, Allen now does best with simple sentences in which the parts appear in a standard order (subject – verb – object). Complex and compound sentences, or sentences like the ones in this exercise which take a strange turn, are problematic for him.

Spelling, too, is proving more and more difficult – as well as writing, which has been a problem for a long time. Combine those two difficulties, and writing out a word like 'laundry' can take a long time, and several mistakes. By the time he is forming the 'd', he has forgotten what word he started out to spell – or that's how it seems. Once an excellent speller, Allen now regularly leaves out letters and makes other spelling mistakes – things he would never have done a few years ago.

Name something you drink that isn't milk:_______________________

I have no idea why Allen answered 'yogurt' to this question! Perhaps he was thinking of the smoothies I occasionally make with yoghurt. He managed to write answers to 16 of the 20 questions of this sort, but a few stumped him (e.g. "What is something hot that is not fire?" "Tell me something wood that isn't a table.") I don't know why. And the whole exercise took him well over an hour.

I'm not convinced that Allen enjoys these language exercises any more, even though he spends hours on things like this every day. And this has been going on, now, for almost three years. If there were other things he could do – such as woodwork or gardening - I think I'd suggest we throw away the pens and papers and books and just do other things that give him pleasure. But the fact is there is very little left that Allen can do to keep himself occupied. Once a first-class putterer and amateur carpenter, now he can't even bang in a nail or use a screwdriver even to just unscrew something. And he never really cared for gardening - though he was an able and willing gardener's assistant. But anything requiring strength, coordination or a steady hand is now beyond him. So working with pen and paper is about all that's left from his former life. It also happens to be that by which, I think, he has always defined himself – along with reading, and that, too, is proving a major challenge.

Large-print books reduce the amount of text Allen has to process in each line. But as with spelling, short-term memory loss is proving a real hindrance to his getting much pleasure from reading. Quite simply, he has to read so slowly that he forgets the main elements of a story by the time he goes on to the next page. Those texts that he can process are mainly the kinds of things given to primary school children. And even though he is willing to read such texts when working in the comprehension workbooks I buy from the educational supply warehouse, he doesn't really want to read about clowns, circuses and other childish topics when reading for pleasure.

Recently I stumbled upon a series of nonfiction texts by Anthony Horowitz, intended for upper primary students. Each of four books in this Legends series (Heroes and Villains, Battles and Quests, Beasts and Monsters, Death and the Underworld) features seven stories taken from mythology or fiction that are interesting enough to appeal to an adult reader. But the little books have just the right mix of type size, grammatical construction and amount of text per story to make them manageable for someone with A's problems. I found the first book in the local children's library, and promptly ordered the next three titles from Booktopia. Until now, we've relied on library books but Allen now wants to annotate his texts and underline various things. It seems to help him digest the content, so we're trying out his new method with these little books. So far they are holding his interest.

Allen's obviously determined to continue reading and writing, even as everything gets harder and harder for him, and more and more frustrating for us both. Can anyone suggest any titles that might appeal to a serious, mature adult whose technical reading age is probably no higher than 10 years?

Home is the place where...

The father of my 50-year-old stepson's 14-yr-old stepson (work that out if you can!) dropped dead this morning. I think the man was only in his 40s. My stepson got this news while helping his wife (my daughter-in-law) care for her father, 'J', whose cancer is expected to take his life in the next few weeks. Yesterday the members of our many-stepped family had gathered at the home of J's mother, my daughter-in-law's grandmother, where J's hospital bed has been set up in the living-room so he can spend his last weeks among family. We were all there to celebrate the 14th birthday of my stepson's own son. Both of the 14-year-old boys were also saying their goodbyes to J. But until now, only one of the 14-year-olds (my stepson's son) lived with my stepson and his wife - her son had been living with his father some 200 km further down the Coast. Now my stepson and his wife will have both boys living with them, and that means a new school for one boy and a big change for both boys to deal with - not to mention another death in the family, which is expected to follow soon.

My stepson and daughter-in-law with their boys in happier times.

The home in which 66-year old J is spending his final weeks is not really his 'home'. It's his mother's place, where his wife has been living with her mother-in-law for many years. But for most of his adult life, right up until he received the fateful diagnosis just months ago, J made his home on a boat – a yacht, I suppose you'd call it, though that implies oodles of money in the family, and that's not been the case. He just always lived on this boat. His wife and child (my daughter-in-law) lived there, too. But some years ago his wife made the decision to move back ashore and she has made her home with her mother-in-law ever since. J himself was just getting ready to set off on a three-month voyage when he found out he mightn't even have that long to live. Prior to that, he'd been perfectly healthy, or so he thought. So now the boat lies dry-docked – as does J. The former is waiting to be sold, and the latter is waiting...well, there's no easy way to say it: "waiting to die". And in the meantime, the father of his only grandson died quite unexpectedly at a young age, of a massive heart attack.

I suppose in one way or another we are all of us waiting to die. But most of us have neither the leisure nor the inclination to sit around thinking about it. So when you do have nothing else to do but that, I wonder: what is it you think about? I hadn't the courage to ask J that yesterday. After all, I've only ever seen him a few times before: at my stepson's wedding, at the odd Christmas lunch etc. I know him so little that at first I couldn't figure out who this person was when his name appeared as a subscriber to my blog a year or so ago. And I have never met my daughter-in-law's first husband – the just-deceased father of her 14-year-old son. But as my own daughter said this morning when telling me of this sudden death in the extended family, and the need to rally round and help, "family's family: you do what you have to do". She was speaking about her offer to take her step-brother's 14-year-old son to live with her for a while, so he could continue at his own school while his father and step-mother live away from home helping J on his life's last voyage. With her own full-time job, a one-hour commute and a baby in daycare, my daughter will be taking on a big burden. But...

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”

So said Robert Frost in Death of the Hired Man. Frost wasn't equating 'home' with 'family' though; in fact, he was saying exactly the opposite. The Hired Man did have family, but he didn't consider that family to be a 'home' he could go to in his final hour. Instead, he had come back to the place where he'd been happiest: the farm where he'd worked productively and been most appreciated. Still, I think my daughter meant the same as Frost did when she used 'family' to explain why she was prepared to put herself out for her step-brother.

So why is it, I wonder, that I am reluctant to get involved in this latest saga of extended family relations! There was a time I'd have raced in to offer help too. But it seems that being a full-time caregiver for more than three years has left me with too little reserves of strength for anyone else's problems. I have a little grand-daughter of my own. And at 11 months she certainly demands a great deal of energy whenever I'm around her. I have no problem 'giving' endlessly of myself to meet her needs. To me such 'work' is pure joy. But just about every other call on my caregiving services leaves me flat and exhausted. I haven't visited an old dear in a nearby nursing home since long before Christmas and she must be wondering what's happened to me. And in recent months, I haven't even been able to write in this blog. I just play endless games of computer solitaire or, after A goes to bed, break open a bottle of wine and watch mindless TV. I sleep as much as possible, too. Even the garden, formerly my salvation, is suffering now as I find it harder and harder to find the motivation to set to work.

I suppose I'm suffering a form of depression, and I'm no stranger to that. But this is unlike any other depression I've experienced. For one thing, I'm well able to do what I absolutely need to do. Anyway, I'm already on anti-depressants, so there's no further solace to be found in medication. Counselling holds no appeal either. I know too well all the things a counsellor will say, and I have already said them all to myself many times. Friends urge me to 'take a break'. But doing so would mean institutionalising A somewhere, since the family's all working, there's no one able to provide the full-time assistance he needs and I can't afford to hire anyone to come and live with him while I take a break.

Am I alone in not wanting to put my husband into residential respite, even for a short time? It's actually for selfish, not selfless, reasons that I shy away from that option. Any disruption to A's routines always has a detrimental effect of some kind. And the intimate assistance he needs with some aspects of toileting invariably causes problems for him, even when (as recently) he is hospitalised or in full-time rehab. We are still treating a bad groin infection that probably dates back to his recent hospitalisation for pneumonia. How could I relax somewhere while worrying about him, and then come back to face even a temporary decline in his condition or a period of delirium as a result of too-heavy administration of sleeping meds (as happened after his recent hospitalisation).

No, I'm convinced that just 'hanging on' through a difficult patch is better for us both than my trying for a 'break' of some sort. Luckily, I'm a person who relishes solitude. So at times like this, in spite of others' needs vying for my attention, I preserve my sanity by hunkering down and keeping myself to myself, but spending any chance I get to play with my grand-daughter. If I were at all inclined to such fancy, I'd say that she came along expressly to give me the strength and a reason to want to keep going.

I wish I were a better, more generous, more outgoing person. But for the moment, I'm in 'survivor' mode. Look for the quietest corner and that's where I'll be. I sometimes wonder if this isn't partly the result of years spent caring for someone for whom talking has become so difficult. I've learned, not only to bear silence, but actually to love it. Peace and solitude give me strength. I'm lucky to be living in an environment where those qualities are so much in evidence. At times like this, I almost feel I'm living a contemplative life. And in a bizarre way, that's a small consolation for what I've lost or given up. I would never say that A's degenerative brain condition is the best thing that's ever happened to me. But terrible as it sometimes is to cope with, our situation does give me licence to be as selfish as I need to be in order to take care of him – and of me.

Postscript: I usually try not to write negatively about my caring role, and I hope regular readers of my blog appreciate that. However, as much as I greatly enjoy seeing other caregivers' positivity as they face much more difficult situations than mine, I also sometimes feel that most of us probably censor ourselves at times when we aren't coping all that well. We tend mainly to write when our coping strategies are working for us, thus sharing our happier or more successful caregiving experiences. But I suspect we all have 'down' times, when we are just exhausted by the demands on our time and energy, or when we look at how healthy couples get to enjoy their retirement years and ask, "Why not me!" If we're lucky, such times don't last too long, and we soon realise how much we still have to be grateful for. We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get on with living. But I wouldn't want anyone reading my blog to think I'm some kind of superwoman, always up and never down in the dumps. So I wrote this post at one of those times when I'm feeling emphatically: "Why me!"

A good hospital story, for a change

Two weeks ago I had to call an ambulance to take Allen to hospital. He was taken to our local hospital, suffering from pneumonia. That was the end of a difficult week in which three generations of my family came down with a nasty viral gastro bug that our grand-daughter picked up on her very first day at a childcare centre. Poor little Charlotte seemed to take the 24 hours of vomiting and diarrhoea quite in her stride. But her parents and grandparents weren't so lucky.

Allen and I had gone down to Brisbane to help make Charlotte's first week at childcare a bit easier by picking her up each day after lunch, instead of her having long days in her first week of care. But things didn't turn out as planned. She, both her parents and I successively succumbed to the dreaded lurgy. I hoped Allen would be spared (after all, he wasn't changing nappies). So I rushed him home on Day 4, when I was well enough to sit upright in the car for the hour's driving. But on Day 5 it was his turn. Still, the gastro seemed to pass without too much trauma. But he did have great difficulty dealing with vomiting. And we think perhaps he ingested something nasty into his lungs at this stage. Whatever the reason, by Day 6 he had a high fever and obvious difficulty breathing.

The less said about being in hospital with aphasia, the better - that's been my attitude in the past. But here at our local Noosa Hospital, I can happily say the hospital experience, though not exactly pleasant, was made much easier for us both by their very enlightened approach to caring for persons with any form of dementia. Allen's progressive aphasia is progressing to the extent that he is now often mildly confused at the best of times. But when he's very tired, his confusion increases. And when he's as ill as he was the first week in hospital, he really hasn't much idea at all what's going on.

As we have private insurance, he was first placed in a very spacious and pleasant private room. But by the second day there, doctors and nurses recognised that Allen couldn't manage when left alone. He could not remember how to ring for a nurse – or even, in the first days of treatment, where he was or why. So he was transferred to a 4-bed ward in the public section of the hospital. Here conditions were definitely less convivial for visitors (e.g. no spacious lounge for making cups of tea or watching the Australian Open on large-screen TV!) But that hardly mattered. The outstanding feature of this ward (and of several others like it) was that this 4-bed ward had a full-time nurse IN THE ROOM 24 hours a day. In fact, the attending nurse was not allowed to leave the room, even to walk down the hall for linen, without a substitute nurse standing in.

The level of personal care in this ward was almost the same as in an Intensive Care Unit, even though these patients' medical needs may not have required high-level clinical nursing. They did require a high level of care, however, since almost all the patients I saw come through this ward in our 10 days there were persons with some degree of dementia or delirium. Having a nurse in constant attendance meant these patients were able to be safely treated for their medical problem AND safely cared for. No one fell out of bed or wandered down the hall. Anyone needing to go to the bathroom had only to call or show some sign. Everyone got assistance with meals to whatever extent this was needed. Most importantly, in Allen's case, someone was always there to remind him what was happening, where he was, when his wife would be back and generally reassure him. If we had had this facility when Allen left Intensive Care two and a half years ago, I would not have had to spend weeks sleeping in a recliner next to his hospital bed. I don't know the extent to which all hospitals offer this service to patients with cognitive impairments but it's a question worth asking before admitting anyone with dementia for treatment, if you have a choice of hospitals.

Allen is now in a standard 2-bed room at a small rehab hospital that he knows and remembers. He's been both an in-patient and a day-patient there in recent years, and so I hope this will help him to settle in well for the week or two of rehab that he's about to receive. If he doesn't settle, then I'll bring him home and just take him in for regular physiotherapy. But the fact we've managed to come this far is due to good nursing geared to the needs of a very special group of patients.