WonderDog

Chloe is amazing. Two weeks after amputation, she's getting herself up and down the stairs, greeting visitors with a wagging tail, and generally behaving like her old self. Awww.

Here's still life with dogs and spinning wheels.

She's slowly growing her hair back. We'll get there.

Lots of good, and one really bad thing

I've been knitting and spinning. The garden is growing, and I've had an abundance of cherry tomatoes. I've seen lots of family this summer. Trent and I got scooters, and we love zipping around town on them. I've read lots of books. All good.

Here's the hard thing: my beloved Chloe, my dearest darling of the pointy ears and the big doe eyes, has bone cancer (osteosarcoma). She was diagnosed earlier this summer, after she started growing a big lump on her shoulder.




I think I cried for a month. We've agonized about what to do. Osteosarcoma is hellishly aggressive and painful, and even with the state of the art treatment, only 50% of dogs are alive a year after diagnosis.

We started with two chemotherapy treatments, and two bone strengthening treatments (the cancer weakens the affected bone, which is both painful and can lead to fractures). It brought us a little time to see if the cancer was already spreading to her lungs (the usual COD for osteosarcoma), and how painful the leg was going to be. I canceled my plans to go to the Netherlands with Trent, and we agonized some more.

It became pretty clear that the tumor was incredibly painful, and we had to decide whether to have the leg amputated or have Chloe euthanized sooner rather than later. When we had the right balance between the pain and the sedative effects of the painkillers, Chloe was still her happy sweet self. She rolled in the grass in the sun, and made lots of new friends on all her walks. I didn't think she was ready to go yet, and I sure wasn't ready to let her go, so we opted for amputation.

That was last Wednesday. Because nothing is ever easy, Trent left for the Netherlands for his study abroad program on the same day. It's been kind of a stressful week. I visited her in the hospital a couple of times, and then brought her home on Sunday night. The vet staff spoiled her rotten while she was there. They fed and watered her by hand, not because it was necessary but because she liked it.

She's recovering incredibly well. I'm supposed to keep her very quiet and help her walk. That worked for about the first 24 hours, but by now she's self-propelled. I went out to get groceries, and she met me at the door when I came home. I left her resting on the ground floor while I did dishes, and when I went down to check on her, she had moved up the stairs onto the landing. She's a super hero (and I think her yellow bandage makes her look like one, too).


I wish this would fix the cancer, but it won't. It eliminates pain, which is important, but we're going to have to do more chemo if we want to to increase her chances. Happily, chemo has very mild side effects for Chloe. Unhappily, it is MAD expensive, and the vet already has a big chunk of our money from the amputation. (Honestly, for what it costs, you'd think she'd come home with an extra leg, not minus one.) So the decisions aren't really getting any easier.

Garden update 2

I do still knit and sew. I just don't take many pictures of it. But look, here's a quilt I'm making for a store sample!

This is called Baby Dots. It's from a pattern called Dots and Daisies by Smith Street Designs. I'm also making the version pictured on the pattern cover, but that one hasn't come together yet.

But since Ryan asked, here's a garden update. I have peas, real actual visible edible snap peas. (Cascadia from Territorial).


I have broccoli heads forming (no, really, look in the center).

I have very lush cherry tomatoes and potatoes, though no produce from either just yet.


I have bolting arugula (with bolting collards in the background, and an Ichiban eggplant protected by a Wall of Water behind that). It was particularly nice, lush arugula before it bloomed, so I'm going to try to save some of the seeds for a fall arugula crop.

I also have imported cabbage worm. Grr. The caterpillars are really hard to spot, since they're exactly the color of whatever brassica plant they are mowing down. Little bastards. I've been picking them off and stomping them flat. Hate.

Garden update

It's a sunny Saturday in Seattle, the sort of day that makes everyone forget the cold dark dreariness of winter. I'm fully embracing the madness.

My garden is looking positively...garden-like. I have peas well up:

I have Chinese cabbage that might be actually preparing to make heads (or it might be preparing to bolt - one can never say):

The kale, collards, and broccoli are all thriving, and the scallions have recovered from the pounding they took in a recent rain storm.

I planted two cherry tomatoes (Red Fig and Cherry Roma) in an Earthbox, and they're currently being warmed up with a Wall of Water (each). I would have held off on putting them out, but the pets have a bad habit of grazing on plants in the house, and I didn't want to risk it.

Additionally, I have two golden zucchini out (one protected by a Wall o' Water, one by a dog e-cone). Today I planted carrots (Bolero) and bush beans (Roma II) as well.

In other news
Chloe has been diagnosed with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), and is now eating gold-plated dog food. It's seriously expensive, as were all the vet bills leading up to the diagnosis. She's doing much better now, which is a relief. At some point we'll have to decide whether to stick with the Very Expensive Chow, or try some other food and risk upsetting her system again.

Meanwhile, I've been working working working. I still knit and sew, but I never get anything done.

Patience

Gardening

I spend an awful lot of time outside looking at my little garden and cheering on the plants. Despite a spell of good weather a week ago, it took longer than I expected for the peas, spinach, and lettuce to sprout. But lo, a pea shoot:

The plants from Sky Nursery are generally doing pretty well. I'm a little concerned by the yellowing of the Chinese Cabbage (background), but the broccoli (foreground) looks good.


There's still no signs of potato sprouts. I think I may have planted them too soon, or too deep, or too something. We've had a good bit of rain, and it's supposed to warm up this weekend. If they don't start sprouting, I'll do a little excavation to see if they rotted.

Excercise

I've started another long-term project...again. I've once again embarked on the couch potato to 5K plan. I tried it last year, then I tried jogging again last fall, in a less structured way. Starting didn't hurt nearly so much this time around. Either I have a tiny bit of lingering fitness from the last bout of running, or I've finally learned to jog slow enough to not kill myself.

Finished things

My friend Kristin is having a baby girl, which gave me an excuse to do some really girly knitting and sewing. I made a sweater

and a matching outfit.

And a quilt covered in ribbons.


Unfinished things
Remember how I said I was going to finish all those unfinished sweaters this year? I worked very diligently on Trent's fisherman sweater for awhile, almost finishing one sleeve. Then he tried it on, and the sleeve is too big. Not too long - too big around. So I'm going to have to rip the whole thing out and reknit it, starting with fewer stitches (I have a plan for that) and decreasing more rapidly. I could cry. Consequently, I've been knitting other things. Hopefully I'll make it back to the unfinished sweaters at some point.

Progress

There’s been great progress on the garden, and I’ve got the blisters to prove it.

The potatoes went in last Thursday. I need to lay chicken wire or something over the bed because the frakking neighborhood cats are using it as a litterbox.

I eventually had topsoil delivered from Viking Topsoil. He was very efficient and more reasonable than Pacific Topsoil’s delivery. So, Mt. Dirt arrived Monday.

On Monday, I also broke up the subsoil in the base of the bed. Tuesday, I moved Mt. Dirt to the raised bed with the aid of Nancy’s wheelbarrow. Here's the before (actually, after about 4 wheelbarrow loads).

That’s when the blisters really came up. But here's the after:

As the cold, cold rain started to fall Tuesday afternoon, I planted the starts I bought at Sky nursery last week (kale, collards, broccoli, and Chinese cabbage). Then I used my frozen fingers to poke some Cascadia pea seeds in, and sowed a row of spinach seed (Tyee hybrid) and some mesclun mix. I covered the whole thing with a floating row cover, held down with some convenient rocks that I dug out of the subsoil.

It’s a good thing I used the row cover, since it’s snowing today. Oh, and here's a cheerful article about our likely spring weather.

Tuesday evening, after I took a dose of Ibuprofen and a shower, Trent and I joined up with our friends Melissa and Paul to celebrate their 2^nd wedding anniversary (we didn’t invite ourselves to their anniversary – they invited us). We had a lovely dinner with them, then headed to the Triple Door to see Habib Koite. We not only found street parking within a block, we also had a front row table. It was an amazing show. We’ve seen Habib Koite 2 times before, and this was by far the best show. We didn’t get home until midnight, and I had to be up at 6 this morning, but it was worth it.

Why I am not a carpenter

Trent and I decided to build a vegetable garden. We bought books (because that's always the first step in new undertakings for Trent). We bought some seeds. We plotted and planned and studied seed catalogs. We shoveled a whole bunch of gravel out of the center of our courtyard. Then nothing happened for many weeks. I finally coerced Trent into going on a lumber expedition with me Saturday night. We learned that 10' boards do not fit into a Focus ZX3 particularly well, but if you drive slowly and carefully, it's doable.

Monday I went to Sky Nursery in pursuit of seed potatoes. I bought some plants while I was there (collards, broccoli, kale, and chinese cabbage). Having actual plants means that the raised bed needs to get built sooner rather than later. This is a crazy busy week for Trent, so I bravely hammered it together Monday afternoon.

It's lacking a certain quality of squareness that is ordinarily desirable in construction. However, it does possess a quality of doneness that I find even more desirable.

(If anyone is interested in the construction details: 2"x12"x10' and 2"x12"x4' held together with strong tie corner brackets and nails.)

Today I removed more gravel from the future raised bed and started working on the dirt. In the picture, the fluffy part is the bit I've done, and the smooth part is still covered in landscape cloth (it was under the rocks). I also worked on the future potato patch. It was a very pathetic flower bed, so I've ripped out most the plants growing there (the rest are scheduled for execution tomorrow, except for the rhododendron) and worked up nice fluffy soil.

For my gardening friends, here are the veggie specifics:
Potatoes: Satina, Calred, and yukon gold.
Kale: Lacinato
Collards: Vates
Broccoli: Packman
Chinese cabbage: China Express.

I can't remember the assorted seeds I've piled up. I know I've got Cascadia snap peas, but the rest is a blur. Some kind of spinach, some kind of pac choi (ching-chiang, I think), and a lettuce mix.

Our current issue is topsoil. If I'm reading the Pacific Topsoil price list correctly, it's going to cost around $140 to get topsoil delivered in a suitable quantity (1.5 cubic yards). That seems like a lot, but we certainly don't own a truck to go fetch it ourselves. Swanson's gave me the number for Viking Topsoil, which seems like it might be a smaller outfit, so maybe they're more reasonable for the relatively small quantity I need (calling them is on my "to-do when time permits" list). Alternatively, I suppose I could buy 40 cubic feet of topsoil in bags and haul it in the Focus.

There has been some knitting and sewing going on too, but I'm not finishing anything.