Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Tuesday, April 09, 2013
This morning Mitra tripped while carrying two gallon jugs of milk and fell forward into a pile of broken glass, milk and blood.; her left wrist was slashed. "You never saw so much blood in your life" were her words spoken from the parking lot at RiteAid folowing an ambulance ride to the ER. Fortunately a friend was present who called 911. The tendon to Mitra's left index finger is cut along with various blood vessels. They stabilized her at the Farmington ER but tomorrow morning she has to go to the hand repair center in Portland to try to get her tendon re-attached and remove more glass.. Max is pretty upset. He just started back to work today in MT - arrived in Kalispell this morning.. We will of course help her in every way we can.
Sally has been fencing non stop and has almost completed repairs to the fence on North field. It is not yet sheep proof but is cow proof. She left the gate open for them. There is nothing but last year’s dead grass of course but they like to explore anyway.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Long hiatus due to my computer being at the repair shop. It had contracted a virus called Total Dysfunction (or some such thing) (Zero Access was its name) which apparently is transmitted via Adobe updates. Fortunately my sister Barby was here to keep up my spirits.
Shortly after she came we took her to Marcia’s house on Lake Webb for tea and to admire the lake. She and I spent as much time there as possible when we were small, at our grandparents” camp which is just a few houses down from Marcia’s. She has not seen Lake Webb with ice on it in many years.
Marcia has come here several times to get going on the vegetable garden. It’s been wonderful having her here. The plan is for her to raise vegetables in my main, lower garden, and Abby to raise the corn and squash in what we call the paddock garden, up by the barn. Besides all the flower borders around the house, we also have another garden we have been working on that is in the foundation of an old barn. We call that the walled garden.
On April 14th our Suffolk ewe named Suzie presented us with three lambs. We named them Winken, Blinken, and Nadia (the first two are males). Unfortunately Suzie didn’t seem able to care for so many and Nadia has ended up as a bottle lamb. However she seems to be taking the raw cow’s milk well and is getting stronger. We nearly lost her several times.
Mitra seems to be doing quite well. Her surgery to reattach the severed parts took three and a half hours; the surgeon said he couldn’t remember a worse cut on a wrist in his thirty years of surgery. Hard to imagine how he could put so many tiny bits back together. Go Mitra! Her mother Marie should be arriving tomorrow to help out. Until now her daughters and many wonderful friends have been keeping the place going. She is not allowed to use her hand at all for three months.

Friday, April 19, 2013
A warm and balmy wind blew today. Much garden work was done by Dally, mostly tree planting. She put in two mulberries and many willows.
The two male triplets, Wy nken and Blynken, are thriving but Nod is a little weaker than they. We had to separate her from the others because Susie will not let her nurse and she quit trying. Susie just butts her and now she has a bad limp in her right front leg. Abby and Sally are bottle feeding her. She is terribly cute and we think she will live, no doubt to be a great nuisance.

It is granddaughter Abby Rose’s birthday. She and Marcia and little Violet joined us for cake at lunch time

We are having an unexpected visit from my son Bret. He arrived in Boston to attend scientific meetings (Experimental Biology 2013) and give a poster but due to the tragic bombing events, today’s schedule was cancelled. Martin and Amy and family were in Boston visiting Aunt Anita and were confined indoors for many hours as a result of the generalized lockdown., Mitra’s mom, Marie arrived today to help Mitra. Mitra feels OK so long as she keeps up her pain pills. Her damaged nerves periodically are extremely painful along with the many incisions..

We ggave Bret a nice duck dinner. It was a duck that Martin shot last fall.

The cows and sheep eat hay in the morning before going out to try their luck with grazing of which there is really none but they keep hoping.

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