God's Got My Back

My beautiful grapefruit

When I returned from visiting my daughter out in the great NW, I jumped right in with both feet to the project at hand which was becoming a backyard homesteader. I had caught my daughter's enthusiasm for the "GROW FOOD, NOT LAWNS" philosophy and having had a vegetable garden in the past (thereby deeming myself 'expereinced' haha), I plunged ahead.

I began with pulling out a rusty old gazebo with no cover and then removing bricks that had been the flooring under the rusty old gazebo with no cover. This will be my winter garden plot. Living in Florida does have it's benefits: we have two growing seasons and I'm prepping for the winter one. (Note: I do live in Winter Garden :-)  I'll post pics as I go. I also had scrounged around the neighborhood and found some freshly cut bamboo which I sat for hours trimming to ready the poles to make a trellis for my climbing peas and cucumbers.

I noticed that my grapefruit tree in the very back of my property appeared to have served as a giant's footstool and I could see why:a huge camphor tree had spread his happy, heavy limbs across the grapefruit tree impinging on sun and space. Somebody had to go and it was not going to be the grapefruit tree. So I decided to become a semi-professional tree trimmer and attack that big boy. I got out the 6 foot ladder and the extension ladder and climbed up with false bravado and began hacking away. Not with an electric saw, mind you, but with a little hand saw. Soon my arms became tired so I took little breaks and completed my compost boxes and some other little projects.

Later in the afternoon I worked my way back to the tree. I climbed up the ladder and as I reached the top the ladder tipped to the left and I tipped to the ground. I hit the ground quite hard and just lay there repeatedly saying "Oh My God I hit my head!" Last time I hit my head I suffered a stroke so maybe you can feel my anxiety. My friend who was helping me on Saturday was with me. Soon my neighbors arrived, the sound of my generous body slamming into Mother Earth must have called them. I slowly sat up and then got up. I talked none stop to ascertain that my brain was OK.

Again, God blessed me. Again and again I have been the grateful recipient of his love. I am an abundantly blessed woman. I fell 8-10 feet and landed flat on my back. I am healing from whiplash and my body is tattooed in black and blue all over, especially the left side of my rear end. But nothing is broken. 

I probably should have been using the extension ladder here rather than this one.

See - I did chop some of those limbs off before I fell !!!

My boys brought over some flowers and this card...and cut down that last remaining limb. HA!