I generally spend more than 23 hours a day in the house, 7 days a week. So it's a wonder that I am not more bonkers than I am. The trick is that I have a small army of biological therapists who visit every day. Pictured is Hedgewig the hedgehog, who pops by every evening, sometimes with a couple of colleagues (trainees, perhaps). Then there are the sparrows, tits, thrushes, robins and more who also add their expertise.
Their rates are quite high (I spend more on feeding them than on feeding myself!), but I reckon they are well worth the expense. If only I could get one of those specialist deer that coco has.....
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whisperit
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Thanks coco. Tell them they'll have to skip through a row of bowling green-type lawns to get here, but there's a lovely oakwood at the top of the road. x
Hi , i hope you sit out for some of the day to enjoy this when its sunny . We get the odd hedgehog in our garden and lots of birds , i love watching them and trying to identify the different types . Best wishes xx
A wonderful post! When I moved to my current house I decided on no lawn, and just wildflowers etc. So my lawn became a meadow. Yes, at the moment it's waist high oats, wheat, barley and rye, with patches of wildflowers. Lots of birds, butterflies and bees. I can't find a goat to borrow for a day but a hero comes once a year to slash it down. Meanwhile I can stand at the window and watch my dog "Coming through the Rye"
Oh Whisperit, your post really cheered me up. Thanks!
I'm loving your post too Mike - pastoral pasture for managing pain and enforced confinement? Turning your lemons into lemonade.
I feel so lucky for being still being just about fit enough to get out and about when the fatigue or arthritis aren't too overwhelming.
But I'm also a big home bod now and so much more appreciative of wildlife around me than I ever used to be. I find that posts like yours and many others here inspire me to keep working as hard as I can at my art practice. I have new peramiters to judge my output by that are nothing to do with selling or popularity or art world fashions (although having an awareness of these is still a necessary downside of being an artist🙄). They are now about communicating the joy of the minutiae that surrounds us all - but only some of us truly appreciate when they are right under our noses. Thank-you!! X
It's another set of hard challenges, isn't it? Impressive that you have been able to find creative ways to deal with this new way of being in the world (sounds so much better than "being completely -- erm--- messed up" doesn't it?). I'm struggling of course - not being able to play the piano any more is killing me - but luckily, the world is so full of wonder that there seems always to be something new to explore x
I hope you don't mind me asking but why can't you play the piano anymore? Is it your fingers, wrists, hearing loss, or because you don't have one or can't sit at it for practical/ physical reasons?
I guess Stephen Hawkins sets a very high standard for what is humanly possible despite all we have lost and continue to lose physically.
But personally I'm always most at ease with myself when my main focus is on creativity of any sort. In fact the main thing for me now is creative collaboration and I see this LUK HU community as essentially collaborative. In fact when I have creative brain/ breakthroughs the first place I always want to come and share them is here with all of you. But of course they are largely just visions in my head and describing them with words here would be futile.
But whatever, this post of yours has inspired me creatively so I do feel that you're being just as creative as I am by writing it. It's just that I am fortunate enough to still be able to be technician and designer and can still utilise the practical skills I've acquired along the way. When I'm not sleeping or applying topical remedies or haven't got chilblains on my fingertips that is!
Yes, you are right! The best part of a forum like this is the sense of a collective, creative act. A getting glimpses of how others find ways to stay human despite the most punishing circumstances.
Piano-wise, its a combination of physical thing - my hands are stiff and swollen, and fatigue that means I can't manage more than a couple of minutes at a time - and an emotional thing - I can still play to about grade 3/4 level, but even simplified to that level, it is so error-strewn, I just end up swearing at my clumsiness. So it becomes a pain rather than a joy.
...And there's Monet and Renoir, still painting though crippled with cataracts and arthritis...! x
Thanks for explaining Mike. When I was initially diagnosed with RA I used to dip my hands in a paraffin wax bath I ordered from Argos and torture my hands and wrists into submission using splints and ibuprofen gel. But the fatigue is a total confidence blighter that I have since struggled to get around. But we can add Frida Kahlo and Edward Burroughs (RA) and one of my hero artists, Paul Klee (Scleroderma) to the list perhaps and put the whole of this community on there alongside! Xx
We have just come back from a break at centre parcs, where our patio was visited each night by a badger, a fox and a roe deer, lots of birds to watch too.
I felt so much better when we got back, after swimming every day, (well bobbing about) and our nightly visits from our furry friends. 😀
Lovely stuff! Turns out there are hedgehog dens in my garden and apparently they make regular forays and trundle about through our shared back garden spaces. All the neighbours have left holes in the fences for the hedgepigs to travel through. I hope watching them brings you much enjoyment
Love your biological therapist post. I've got Harry hedgehog coming each night and do regard it as therapy before bed. Maybe Harry and hedgewig could get together and make little hogs!.
Happy watching and just think we're helping to keep hedgehogs going as well as getting health benefit!. X
I'll see if I can post a pic Whisperit. Talking of wildlife we suddenly had a squirrel visit yesterday and like you love watching the birds we feed. All the greater because we live on an estate admittedly with good tree cover and walkways. How about you?.
Glad you are enjoying them all, and that you have enough greenery around to support them. Trees are amazing - machines that absorb carbon dioxide and change it into oxygen for free! There's a grey squirrel that's a fairly regular visitor. Luckily, it's not a nuisance - some people seem to have to take extraordinary measures to stop them trashing the place, but ours is well behaved. The only uncouth element are the Starlings, who squabble noisily with each other and crap all over the feeders - it's like The Bullingdon Club has decided to visit. Look forward to your pic x
Hi, thank you for your sweet post; we have occasional hogs passing by us. We also have 8 cats so we have entertainment built in also!
I am 100% like you; indoors for 24/7. For the last 3 years. I have been out once (excepting hospital visits too numerous to mention) last December. A friend borrowed a wheelchair and took me around my local town, where I used to walk every day for years, knew everyone. Several people I saw that day were overjoyed to see me, thinking I must have died (they knew I was unwell) and actually cried! It made my day that my absence was noted by those I saw that day. It made me determined to get out more.
As yet, 7th July '17 I have not. I am awaiting a wheelchair referral appt and hope to get an electric one so I can leave the house. I can move around my small bungalow fairly well, 8 steps from bed to bath etc, tho some days I am not out of bed to even do that. I have nerve compression in my pelvis, which is frozen, and my right leg, making it difficult to walk, stand etc for longer than a couple minutes. I too have lupus, FB etc etc. Ahh Lupus, the gift that keeps on giving. Gorgeous photo of Hedgewig. I will visit here again, this is my first go and you can tell I don't get to talk to many people as I no longer know when to stop! Stopping now. Peace and pain relief to all. x Dawn who is up.
Good to see you here, Dawn! Id be interested in hearing ow you get on with that electric wheelchair. Although I am hoping my house arrest will be lifted eventually, these are the kinds of plans we have to make these days (though who knows for the 2028 olympics, hey?)
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