Friday 26th May - "Step out of the traffic!"

To explain the title;

I am quoting from Psalm 46, verse 10, in 'The Message' version - a modern language paraphrase written by Eugene Petersen. Traditionalists will know this verse better as 'Be still (and know that I am God)'.

Love it or loathe it, The Message Bible is well worth reading for its surprising reworking of familiar passages. 

This is exactly what is happening to me at the moment - or rather I feel as though I have been PUSHED out of the main flow, like a leaf that was floating on the current of a river suddenly being swirled into a back eddy and still, calm water. In other words, I am not well. I am not exactly ill, but definitely Not Well. So, I have the antibiotics, and they are having the usual effect of wiping me out. 

I have about ten minutes of typing before mental shutdown... I can read for ten minutes, listen to the radio for ten minutes, knit for ten minutes; (the sock I started a few days ago - double knitting so it is growing quickly),  

think about a new project for ten minutes, watch television for ten minutes - and then I mentally slow down to a crawl and rest for... a little while.

I want to sow my new seeds which were delivered earlier in the week - CARDOONS! I am so excited!

 Ever since I saw the first one - where ? Nyman's Gardens? The Prairie Garden at Henfield? I have no idea - I have wanted to have cardoons, or maybe just one cardoon, of my very own. Wouldn't two be better? Wouldn't one on its own be lonely? Anyway, I can't do anything about them now, and there's no use counting cardoons before they have germinated.

I've also managed to finish the second pair of socks which have been in progress for most of this year; (Technical talk - they are Arne and Carlos 'easiest socks in the world' and have strangely triangular heels, none of this 'turning a heel' hassle, and fit surprisingly well. The heel sort of rounds itself out when you put them on, but I MUST learn how to graft the heel rather than cast off and sew it closed.)

Right, time's nearly up. I've done 'afternoon snooze in bed', gently lulled to sleep by Gardener's Question Time on Radio 4, (amazing effect of sun shining through patterned glass at the top of the stairs as I came back down) 

and I've done 'siting outside in the sun with a pot of tea and reading'

and I am resigned to living a quiet, but hopefully not

life for a couple of days while the antibiotics do their stuff. Which they usually do quite quickly, especially if I give up all ideas of doing anything strenuous while they are doing their work.

Ten minutes is up. Back tomorrow...