Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Trellises, Wrists and a Granddaughter





I love spring and the crazy amount of time I spend playing in the yard and I look forward to the long weekends when I can immerse myself in planting. So imagine my joy when I developed a ganglion cyst on my wrist that refused to go away even after two aspirations... resulting in instructions to wear this lovely brace for a week. Real convenient for digging. Or pretty much anything. Bottom line...the brace didn't help, the cyst is still there, and as I told the doctor, I'll check back in the fall about surgery...it's gardening season! It doesn't limit my range of motion that much or hurt enough (and only when I push it) to deny myself the pleasures of the garden.
And he assured me it wouldn't hurt me in the long run to wait. So I'm slowed down and pacing myself and the gardening continues.
I did manage to get the trellises up in the child care garden and we have planted seeds and starts. We have Honey Select corn, Blue Lake pole beans, Spooktacular pumpkins, Zucchetta Trombolina squash, SuperSweet 100 cherry tomatoes, Sungold cherry tomato, Adelaide Baby carrots, chives, basil and parsley.
For Mother's Day the children planted pots with basil, chives and parsley seeds. Looking for a safe spot to keep them before Mother's Day while sprouting, I placed two spare fence boards across the trellis in my other garden bed. (I put this up last year... the idea was in Cottage Living magazine.) It worked great! Safe from the dog and certain little fingers that wanted to keep planting over and over...
I've had a few fewer gardening weekends this spring than usual...but for a very enjoyable reason. I've made several trips to San Diego...the most recent of which was to meet my brand-new granddaughter! I'm already looking forward to creating memories like I have of gardening with my grandparents...although I'll have to wait until she can at least sit up to start on that :-)

8 comments:

Angela Pratt said...

Congrats on your granddaughter!

Your trellises look great and it sounds like you've got a nice mix of veggies and herbs going there.

I've heard about that wrist thing. Is it related to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?

growingagardenindavis said...

It's actually synovial fluid leaking out of the wrist joint possibly from overuse (Hmmm...maybe the half ton of stone I put in for the front path??? or refinishing the kitchen cabinets?? or a combination of the two!) I think it is a better choice than carpal tunnel because the pain is fleeting and stops when I stop doing whatever is making it hurt.

Christine said...

I'd like to add my congratulations. A granddaughter! What a wonderful blessing.

Also, I love the idea that you set aside a separate garden for your childcare kids. I might need to do that for my own two sons because they are getting the gardening bug by seeing me out there all the time yet I can be a little overprotective of what I've got growing out there.

Kylee Baumle said...

I've had two ganglion cysts, with removals of each. They occur when the tissue surrounding a joint or tendon becomes inflamed and it swells and fills with a gel-like substance. They may be caused by overuse, and in my case, was probably related to my profession of being a dental hygienist.
If you have it removed, it has about a 30% chance of coming back, which my first one promptly did about six weeks after the surgery. However, after the second surgery, which I waited a long time to have, it never returned. That's been at least 20 years ago.
leslie said the pain is fleeting, but in my case, after I'd had them for awhile, they would sometimes ache even when I wasn't using that hand. I used to have a co-worker bang it with the PDR, which is a huge book. That would pop it and then it wouldn't hurt until it started growing again.
The surgery wasn't difficult for me; I just had to be off work while it healed and due to my job involving the intensive use of my hands, that was about six weeks.
I wouldn't hesitate to have surgery to remove another one, if I ever do get one. Oh, and we tried the aspiration thing first, and also injection with cortisone. I'd waited too long for this, as the gel inside the cyst had gotten too viscous.

Annie in Austin said...

Congratulations on your new granddaughter, Leslie ~ I hope you get to see her often, whether she grows up to be a gardener or not.

Ignoring the wrist until the garden is less interesting sounds perfectly sensible to me, too.

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

growingagardenindavis said...

Christine...I know what you mean about the overprotective thing...I hope you find a spot for your sons...the kids are so much more excited about the seeds they actually planted than just watching the other garden in past years.
Kylee...You give me hope, although I would hope one surgery would be enough!
Annie...I think I was visiting your blog while you were visiting mine! And I'm hoping to see the little sweetie this weekend...and any other time I can get cheap enough Southwest tickets!

lisa said...

Congrats on the granddaughter! So far I only have a "grandpuppy", but she's a doll! That kid garden looks like a great idea! I get wrist issues, too...I would absolutely put off surgery until gardening winds down-it's not like it'll necessarily get any worse.

Iowa Gardening Woman said...

I bet your mothers were thrilled with the pots of herbs their little one planted.

Congratulations on the granddaughter, grandkids are the best!