Things That Make Me Think of Green

Happy Solstice y'all!

Today's blog is brought to you by the colour green!

Here is a little green frog that we found nestled in a calla lily this Saturday while on the Denman Island Garden Tour. My brother and I photographed this obliging frog from different angles and you can find his rather similar picture on his blog, as well as some nymphs lounging in a garden pool as a bonus.

Also green , very green is the bottle of liquid chlorophyll I won as a door-prize at a mini health-fair and seminar I stumbled into. It is a dietary supplement that may have a bouquet reminescent of lawn clippings, but it is almost certainly more nutritionally sound than many things lurking in my pantry now. A teaspoon in a wineglass of water, and its like I'm quaffing Pinot Verte '06. A very fine year for antioxidants.

I looked up the purported benefits of chlorophyll and in addition to behaving internally like a big bowl of salad it also may "deodorize" my innards. Apparently if you suffer from halitosis and/or flatulence (you poor thing), a big bottle of this stuff is your friend.

In other things green, this week is the anniversary of my coming home from the hospital after having explosive appendix surgery last June. Why is that green you may ask?

Well, the whole emergency operation thing and IV's and maddening hospital gowns made me feel rather green around the gills (actually a little lower and to the right of my gills to be precise). The whole week-long hospital stay (some of it on a bed in the hallway) was painful and boring by turns.

But it was really the disgusting jello the hospital served that traumatized me. Sometimes it was green. Alas, more often it was orange. Touching that quivering mass in the little plastic dishes they brought me dyed my fingers a frightening shade of orange. It was dreadful. How are you supposed to heal your body eating toxic gelatin I ask you? Bleah!

My other food choice was sea-water salty broth. Luckily for my intestines I had friends that smuggled home-made soup into my ward or I would have likely perished and you would not be reading this now.

In other green news, I am now care-taking someone else's garden while it is readied for sale. I am becoming a freelance gardener it seems, as this is my second gardening client, and it appears there may be a third person wanting a share of my green thumb too!

I'm excited because its another way to make some more travel money and it's a job I'm rather fond of: nothing like taking a weedy lot and transforming it into a sweet little garden again.

Here is a picture of part of the yard I'm working on--it's coming along rather nicely.

A friend phoned me tonight and asked me a gardening question and I was happy to be able to answer it fairly knowledgably. I'm realizing this is happening more and more--somewhere along the way I've become a Gardener. When did that happen I wonder?