I am back

[KathyLauren]

I saw the 'ish' link in my bookmarks and realized it has been ages since I was here. Nice to see it's still running and there are a few familiar faces still around.

Since I was last on, I managed to get pneumonia. It wasn't covid, though it looked like it, but they tested me multiple times and it came up negative. It was serious, though, and I was in hospital, including ICU, for nearly three weeks. My respirologist told me that I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for IV antibiotics. I have made a "remarkable" (respirologist's word) recovery, but my lungs will never regain their full capacity. Darn, there go my Olympic hopes!

We had a mild winter, but with a couple of unusually cold snaps. They killed the peach blossom buds, so, although the leaves are healthy, there is no fruit. Same with the black currents. The strawberries did better, and we had a good quantity of berries for our porridge. The little Gravenstein apple tree has 82 little green apples on it, its best crop to date.

All of which is a moot point, because we sold that house and have just moved into a new one. We have two acres with good sun exposure and lots of potential. There are four rows of something, likely a fruit tree or bush, but with no evidence of any crop. Possibly another winter casualty. We are still in unpacking mode, so we aren't going to get much if any gardening done this year.

Why did we move? Well, my wife has a chronic need to run away from home. As soon as a place starts to feel like home, she has to move. *Sigh* I try to make the best of it, but it is hard. On the practical side, we were too far from civilization: it was a half-hour drive to get anywhere. Now we are just on the outskirts of town. We won't have that nail-biting drive up the mountain when we go home from a theatre rehearsal on a winter night. We are both getting up in age, so being close to doctors and a hospital is good. When I had my pneumonia, it was half an hour for the ambulance to get there and half an hour to hospital. Now, it will be only a few minutes.

I still intend to keep on doing my astrophotography. I had the observatory picked up and moved to the new location. It will be a couple of months before I have it set up and running again. The sky here isn't quite as dark as where we were, but it is better than I thought it might be. And I have a lower treeline, so a better view down to the horizon.