April 22, 2016

My lemon tree seems to be holding her own after her prune and root trim. I still need to keep a close eye on her. She had a scale infestation that I treated, and her trimmed back stage makes it easier to monitor. This weekend she gets another good bath with dish detergent and water and I’m prepping a concentrate of canola oil and water to keep in the refrigerator if I need it.

Treating infestation and disease in my plants is a fairly new thing for me because I kept so few inside and my outside plants fend for themselves fairly well. However, new frontiers means new knowledge and I like that. My grandfather always said, “learn everything you can learn, you can always forget what you don’t need.” He lived to be a vigorous ninety-eight years old; he could do flutter kicks well into his eighties, but he developed Alzheimer’s.

One of the hardest parts of the disease was when my grandmother passed away. Each day he would ask for her. In the beginning we would explain that she had passed away and he would mourn her anew. We gradually stopped telling him – changed the subject or told him she was with her sister (because they had both died, but he didn’t remember that). After reading The Drafter I’ve thought a lot more about it. Would it have been better to let him remember everyday what he lost, so that the pain would keep alive a love he could remember tomorrow – only to find out it was gone? Or were the days of teasing and good humor an acceptable trade off for someone who forgets every day that they don’t remember. I guess each individual has to decide for themselves.

Regardless, Kim’s book, The Drafter, is the start of an amazing series. The Detroit series with Peri Reed is set to blaze a new trail: a thriller read with a strong protagonist who may have to answer similar questions, for different reasons, for herself.

For me, I’m taking the memories of my grandfather and settling them into this one happy thought, “learn all you can learn, you can always forget what you don’t need.” I received two amazing emails yesterday. Each confirms I have reached the extreme limit of settled land, beyond which lies wilderness. Frontiers draw me because when deciding what to do with my life I usually think not only of what I can and will do, but also of what others cannot or will not do.