The Fruits of Labor

I have been receiving some very kind emails from customers wanting to know how I'm doing.

First off, my staples came out last week and all looked great. I am healing well. I can now raise my arm to shoulder level with some tolerable pain. I cannot lift anything, maybe a cup of water. But that's it before it hurts and my arm begins to shake.

I have been going to physical therapy now 3 times a week and it has made a huge impact on my recovery. My dr says he's never seen anyone recover so well and quickly for someone who had such bad bone spurs. The good thing is I didn't need rotator repair after all and I am able to heal quicker and not in as much pain as we thought I'd be in. Although I was in a great deal of pain and this was by far the worst surgery I have ever had, I would say it was worse than giving birth to my kids, in which 2 of them were with no drugs. I think that says enough.

I'm still in pain and a couple ibuprofens help me in dealing with it now. I'm not the type that likes to take pills, so when the dr prescribed me with Vicodin, I nearly had a heart attack. Luckily I only took them for the first 5 days, which was longer than I cared for.

During this time off I have been enjoying our garden we planted back in May. We have gone organic and planted a wide variety of vegetables and fruits.

My zucchini plants have taken off and I have so much zucchini we've been eating it like crazy. I've even passed on some to the neighbors that were so excited to receive them. One of them asked for more and I was happy to give it away.

Yesterday we grilled some sliced zucchini. We brushed on some extra virgin olive oil on the grill, sprinkled each slice with sea salt and black pepper. They came out great, the kids loved them.

Today I am making zucchini bread. My daughter grated the zucchini for me yesterday so I am ready to go.

I also blanched and froze chopped zucchini so we can enjoy them in soup during the winter months, yum!

We have corn growing as well, radishes, chives, different varieties of pumpkins, giant watermelon, cilantro, many different varieties of tomatoes, tomatillos, cucumbers, jalapenos, green beans, peas, sunflowers, spinach, carrots, strawberries and I'm sure there's more, I just can't remember. They are all coming in so nicely. We also have a beautiful pomegranate tree with pomegranates growing, lemon, lime, orange, guava, peach, and fuji apples. I have so many apples today will be a very busy day for us here.

My husband will be coring and slicing the apples so we can make apple pie. My daughter will be making the crust. We plan on making about 5 pies out of the apples. I plan on freezing all but one for the holidays. With the rest of the apples the kids are already eating them. I'm looking into some other recipes to make out of them.

I love my guava tree. It reminds me of the many times we've been to Hawaii and Maui, went down for our morning breakfast and I always had a nice glass of fresh guava juice.

I love going out to the garden in the evening when the weather has cooled down and the sun sets behind the hills. The kids come out with me and we enjoy picking the fruits of our labor.

As far as going organic, it's quite a chore. I've seen squash beetles under my zucchini plants and try to kill them any chance I get. I see lots of ladybugs though. Weeds are such a problem. I leave that one to the hubby. He's out there now pulling them...;-)

If anyone has any advice on organic gardening, please email me at soapsilly at hotmail dot com.

One of the other things I have enjoyed so much about gardening is that I am feeding my family with healthy (I had previously said healing, I must've been daydreaming of getting better! LOL) fruits and vegetables that we have grown ourselves. We know exactly where they came from with no pesticides, or other chemicals what so ever. And I am saving money during this hard economic time. I have cut my grocery bill down by about 50%.

I will take some photos and post them here for everyone to view later today or tomorrow.