A quiet week on the garden front. After my seed catalog binge I’ve calmed down. It’s time to be fallow for a little while, well, at least until after Winter Solstice. Then I will be eager to order seeds and make my seed starting calendar. That’s always fun.
I mentioned last week about my neighbor cutting down the lilacs that shade the fence line and having to reconsider my shade planting plan for the area. Well, problem solved! Because James wanted plants for night moths I was having a bit of conundrum of where to plant these mostly sun-loving annuals. Guess where they will be going? I suddenly have lots of room for moth flowers and some annual medicinal herbs. And the shady prairie plants I had been planning to put in that area will now go up next to the back of the house in a shady-ish area and in the front yard shaded by the apple trees. It’s like garden Tetris!
Remember that old video game? My sister and I had an Atari when we were kids and it was one of my favorite games. Who knew the skills I learned in that video game would come in handy in real life one day?
It was a cold week. On one morning’s bike commute the temperature was -5F/-20C with an even colder windchill. And yet I arrive at work sweating. People think I’m out there freezing, but an exercising body generates heat, especially when it has to work extra hard to pedal a heavy winter-sturdy bike into a roaring headwind. Also, there is an art to layering, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Biking out in the cold is completely doable and even fun. Though it does take more energy than biking in summer, it gets me fresh air and a good night’s sleep.
There was a little cycling accident Saturday, however. James and I cycled to our food co-op for groceries. It was a bigger than usual shop because we not only got two week’s worth of groceries, but also all the special ingredients I need for next weekend’s Winter Solstice meal. For grocery shopping I ride an e-cargo bike, a Tern GSD. It is our car replacement (2 1/2 years car free!), big and heavy, and even heavier when loaded up with all those groceries.
So Saturday afternoon we are approaching a four-way stop five blocks from our house when a man, who must have been sitting in his car for some time because he didn’t pass us on the street and I did not see him park and none of his car lights were on, opened his car door and hit me with it. In cycling parlance this is called being doored. Sadly, it is not uncommon. It has never happened to me before, and is something I am super careful to avoid by keeping track of cars and people and staying out of the “door zone.”
Only with the big cargo bike loaded with groceries I am very wide, so was a little closer to parked cars than usual. Fortunately, I did not bike head-on into the open door and flip over my handlebars. I was passing the car when he opened his door into the rear end of my bike. It knocked the back of my bike out from under me. I went down onto my right side and slid across the icy pavement to a stop at the curb in front of the parked car. I was also lucky there was not another car parked in front of this one.
You may recall a year ago about this time, James and I were coming home from getting groceries, I hit some ice and fell and fractured my collarbone. I sat up on the icy street doing a mental body check, feeling cursed, and hoping like hell I didn’t break anything. Since I went down on my right side and slid, my right knee was hurting and my right arm. James came rushing over to make sure I was ok. The man apologized saying he had looked but hadn’t seen me, but since he opened the door as I was passing, he clearly had not looked.
I continued to sit in the street next to the curb while James got all of the man’s insurance information. Nice people at the corner coffee shop ran over and wanted to help me up, but I told them I just needed to sit there for a bit. Finally, I was ready to stand. My knee was throbbing but I could bend it and walk on it. It felt scraped and bruised. My arm was also throbbing but my hand, wrist, and elbow were all fine. Nothing felt broken, but then my collarbone hadn’t felt broken either.
My bike was damaged and will need repairs. The right brake handle was snapped right off and dangling from the handlebars by the cable. But I could still ride it home. So we made our slow and careful way the five blocks to our house.
At home I could remove all my layers and look at my knee and arm. My knee was scraped and bruised and my forearm had a big goose egg swelling on it that made me really worried.
Comfrey salve and rest has brought the swelling down on my arm so it’s almost back to normal, though because of the bruising, tender. And my knee is bruised and a little sore but not painful. I will continue to keep an eye on them because sometimes after accidents it takes a little while for things to develop.
James called the man’s insurance company and opened a claim. They will pay for the bike repairs and if I need medical attention. They should also pay for my waterproof Patagonia pants that now have a tear in them.
In spite of everything, there was still much joy this week. Getting all the ingredients for the Solstice meal, which I will tell you all about next weekend, is always fun. There was also fresh snow earlier in the week and biking in fresh snow is magical. I have lights around the wheels of my bike that change colors and this makes me happy and other people happy too. Drivers at traffic lights roll down their windows and tell me they love my bike. People on the street shout, “cool bike!” as I go by. And one person this week wished me a merry Christmas.
It’s the middle of law school finals and Thursday a first year law student came to the desk to ask “for a friend” whether the librarians had any favorite treats. I said we never say no to chocolate. No treats have yet to appear, but just the asking was a joy. My boss has a large Dickens Village collection and went all out in setting it up in the library this year. He set it up in front of an area of the library that is all glass and looks out onto the atrium of law school so you don’t even have to be in the library to enjoy it. It is delightful! And the students love it. I make sure to pass along all the oohs and ahhs I hear, which brings my boss great joy, and of course, there are few things as joyful as sharing joy with others.
Reading
- Book: There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak. This is a multi-narrator novel that takes place in Victorian London, 2018 London, and 2014 Turkey and Iraq during the massacre of the Yazidi people by ISIS. The narration is all connected by rivers—the Thames and the Tigris—and water in general as well as the poem Gilgamesh. The book at times got a little baggy, mostly because the Victorian era part of the story got far too much focus and its pacing was slowed down at times by too much extra detail. Overall, however, I very much enjoyed the story.
- Article: Yes, you can fight climate change in your backyard. Here’s a little graphic story about rewilding your backyard, even if you backyard is a balcony.
- Poetry: If Sylvia Plath wrote “Wild Geese”. Here’s a bit of poetry from by Erin Lyndal Martin at Electric Lit. There are two poems. The other one is “Emily Dickinson’s ‘I’m Nobody’ as Rewritten by T.S. Eliot” Heh.
- Conversation: Olivia Laing and Jamaica Kincaid. A chat between avid gardeners and the politics of gardens at Granta via LitHub.
Quote
“Rivers are fluid bridges—channels of communication between separate worlds. They link one bank to the other, the past to the future, the spring to the delta, earthlings to celestial beings, the visible to the invisible, and, ultimately, the living to the dead. They carry the spirits of the departed into the netherworld, and occasionally bring them back. In the sweeping currents and tidal pools shelter the secrets of foregone ages. The ripples on the surface of water are the scars of a river. There are wounds in its shadowy depths that even time cannot heal…
Water has memory.
Rivers are especially good at remembering.”
Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky, page 432
Listening
- Nothing of particular note this week
Watching
- Movie: Perfect Days (2023). This was a beautiful movie. Hirayama leads a simple life cleaning public toilets in Tokyo. It won an Oscar earlier this year for Best International Feature Film. Well deserved. Kôji Yakusho, who plays Hirayama, is a fantastic actor.
James’s Kitchen Wizardry
This week James made delicious cinnamon rolls for a special breakfast treat. He also made a root pizza: shreded beets, radish, potato, with garlicky butternut squash sauce, homemade “sausage,” and homemade “cheese.” Colorful and delicious!
I saw the title on this essay and my heart skipped… even though it was 11pm and I needed to go to bed, I skimmed down through the article to make sure there were no broken bones again this year.
It is inspirational to read how you truly find joy amidst the less than savory story of our world these days!
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Thank you! I was a bit worried about my arm for a while, but other than my bike and a bag of flour and some slightly crushed apples that were in the pannier (that was a mess to clean up!), nothing was broken 🙂
I refuse to have my joy taken away! It’s everywhere. Admittedly, some days it is harder to find than others, but it’s always there, waiting to be noticed 🙂
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Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry about your accident. I am glad your injuries weren’t more serious! I hope all repairs are done speedily.
Your bike wheels are so cheerful.
I had a patron bring us chocolate just today! It’s so nice when our regulars think of us.
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Thanks Laila! Still waiting to hear from the shop about what needs to be done to the bike and of course dealing with the guy’s insurance.
Glad you like my bike wheels! They make me happy 🙂
So nice of your patron to bring you chocolate!
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Oof, so sorry about the accident! I’m glad you weren’t hurt too badly although that kind of accident is super scary. When I was riding my bike regularly in Finland, I was never doored but I had several bad falls on ice, and also got sprayed by the giant snow-clearing vehicles. Winter biking! Fun! (but seriously, some of my best memories are from that long winter of snowy, icy biking. Enjoy!)
I am taking the slow road on winter “gardening” — I have a big pile of manure/compost to add to beds and I can’t decide whether to add it now to mitigate the rain flooding, or wait until spring. But then I realize that I will procrastinate either way so I should just pull out the dead stuff when its rotted a bit more and then dump the compost on there whenever I get around to it. I will be doing easier gardening this year, more dividing and fewer seeds. I just don’t have time to do the seed-tending like I’d like. Not yet, anyway. This year, I will be hoping that everything I planted last year comes back, and then a few veggies (tomatoes & cucumbers, basil, salad stuff, maybe some winter squash). And maybe some zinnia seeds because those are the only ones that consistently do well and they are so cheerful!
Happy solstice! Can’t wait to hear about your fantastic meal!
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Thanks Daphne! It was pretty scary and poor James was riding behind me and saw it all happen.
I like your slow gardening plan. Seed tending is definitely time-consuming. It’s one reason I love the feral arugula. It reseeds itself and does all the work for me year after year 🙂 Too bad tomatoes and other veg aren’t so reliable! Zinnias are always a cheerful spot in the garden and so easy to grow. Enjoy your winter “gardening” whatever form it ends up taking!
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Oh you poor thing – what a horrid accident! It’s not even so much the falling – bad as that is – but the shock when something so unexpected happens and what was an ordinary ride becomes a saga. I’m so relieved you’re not hurt any worse than you are – that’s bad enough! And particularly unpleasant when you’ve broken your collarbone in the past. I think treats are required – lots of them!
I was going to ask you what your Solstice meal was going to be, but I will wait patiently for the big reveal! And I love both your colourful bike and the Dickens’ village – just charming!
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Thank you! I was shocking since the door opened behind me and then I suddenly found myself skidding across the ground. The bike is repaired and coming home today and my bruises are healing up. I can almost kneel on my knee and lean on my arm again. The Solstice meal turned out to be pretty spectacular 🙂
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Happy Winter Solstice! Today is the day and we begin another happy cycle of days lengthening into Spring. YAY
I’m sad to hear of your being DOORED. How awful! Thinking positives for mending and quick payments for quick bike and pants fixes.
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Thank you dear Care! I’m looking forward to the days getting longer. It’s been a bit depressing only seeing the sun through the windows at work most days. I’m mending quickly, and hopefully will soon be done with the insurance claim.
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I’m so glad that you survived being DOORED. The same thing happened to my niece-in-law and they are in Holland! By law the person in the car is supposed to twist around and open the door using the furthest away hand so that they have to see anyone cycling on that side, obviously they didn’t. Luckily none of the kids were being transported on the bike at the time, I’ve seen three kids on their mother’s bike at the same time. Femke was quite badly injured, broken arms and ribs, but it could have been a lot worse as she was knocked into the opposite side of the road, but no oncoming traffic.
Our son got hit by a bus a few months ago in Edinburgh, the bus driver admitted she hadn’t even seen him, but the bus company won’t admit liability, they are just dragging their feet and will have to pay up eventually as there are so many witnesses and it’s even on camera. Luckily the bus was more damaged than our son was, but it killed his bike.
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Thanks Katrina. Oh my goodness, poor Femke! I hope she has made a complete recovery. The twist you describe a driver is supposed to do is called the Dutch Twist here. It is not required, but cycling advocates are trying to raise awareness and get people to do it. Given that I regularly see drivers parked on the street throw their doors open and get out of their cars as though they were in a garage or parking lot and not on a street, I don’t have much hope that any kind of education campaign will change things.
I’m so sorry about your son! I am glad he is ok. I hope the bus company admits liability soon and pays up. As if being hit weren’t bad enough, he has to deal with everything afterwards.
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Phew, I am so glad to hear that it wasn’t too terrible after all. (But I’m late reading this, so I hope nothing’s surfaced, since.) I know that horrid feeling of actually looking at and prodding the injuries after returning home. In some ways it’s shocking to see the scrapes and swelling because it’s only a drop of two of blood that’s seeped through the winter layers (if any) but, on the other hand, you also feel SO discombobulated that you feel like, when you actually pull back the clothing, it should be gushing and internal organs oozing out your leg or something to reflect the fact that you’ve been thrown off the Earth and landed back on it haaarrrrddd. I think one has to have ridden a bike or been vulnerable as a pedestrian/rider to truly remember to look out for pedestrians/cyclists in this age of distraction.
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Thanks Marcie! No additional injuries surfaced, thankfully. Bruises are almost gone now. Heh, I was expecting gushing and oozing when I got home and was so relieved when there wasn’t any! It attribute it to the icy slush on the road surface and all the layers I had on. I suspect you are right that someone who has experience being a vulnerable public space participant is much more likely to be aware of others than someone who only drives a car.
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So, I’ve been reading backwards and suddenly here is your “doored” episode. You poor thing. I reckon that driver thought he’d looked but he did one of those “looks” that I think we might all sometimes be guilty of, in that we look with our eyes out of habit but we don’t actually apply our brains and “see”. Anyhow, I am so glad you were not seriously hurt. And, of course, you wouldn’t have eggs in your pannier, but just as well you didn’t. I’m glad to have read now, in your later posts, that you are ok.
Mr Gums and I loved Perfect Days. Such a beautiful beautiful movie, and he was growing little plants wasn’t he. We only have a balcony now, in our down-sized life, with some inherited-from-the-previous-owners plants I don’t much like, and an inherited-from-my-sister-via-my-Dad plant that I do. I’d love to plant some hardy hot weather Australian native plants in place of the old owners’ ones and am thinking and researching. The balcony gets sun pretty much all day all year, and we go away a bit (to Melbourne where both our kids live) so thinking, thinking, thinking. Meanwhile, we have a herb garden in our 23-apartment complex, for which I help out with pruning/cutting back. And we have citrus trees in some planters, which give us lemons and mandarins mostly. We do a lot of the picking, and leave little bags of citrus produce at the bottom of our two lifts.
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I think the driver must have looked in his rearview mirror and never looked out his window. If he had, he would have seen me right next to him as he was about to open his door. Heh, no eggs in the pannier but had some glass jars that did not take a direct hit and somehow didn’t break when the bike went down.
Yes, he was growing trees in Perfect Days. I loved how his morning ritual included spraying them with water. Have fun researching what native plants to grow on your balcony! I think that is a brilliant idea of course 🙂 How wonderful your apartment complex has an herb garden and citrus trees. That must be nice working in it and getting to know your neighbors. Plus, herbs and citrus, can’t really go wrong there!
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Yes, I hope he has learnt his lesson …
I also liked how he carefully dug up little seedlings when he was out and about. His quietness, gentleness and care felt very Japanese.
And yes, a real joy is getting to know our neighbours. Some very friendly people, plus of course the odd less so ones. But the lovely ones far outweigh those. And a nice mix of generations.
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Let’s hope so!
I loved that about him. Yes, his quietness and gentleness felt very Japanese, perhaps in a more old-fashioned way compared to the younger people and all the tech and flash and bling that Tokyo has become. Cassette tapes! I was amazed he could listen to them in his car since cars don’t have tape decks in them anymore.
Heh, we always need odd neighbors to keep things interesting 😉
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We do as long as the oddness is not antisocial!
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