GrannyXpress

Granny Gardens

Filed under: GrannyX Approves, GrannyXGrouses, organic, organic garden, GrannyXEbooks @ May 4, 2008 9:30 pm by healthiacynthia

I am the Belated Gardener.
I have good intentions, but
planting by the Moon– isn’t
that some horrid pagan ritual?

And so, I usually have some
scraggly little garden
and most of my seeds– if
they do indeed, germinate–
turn into leggy vines with
tiny veggies,
hardly worth the bother.

But this year will be different.

I can feel it in my bones.

And I’m going to get hold of
this wonderful ebook that
will apparently take my
hand (well, metaphorically)
and help me be the sort of
organic gardener I, and all
of my neighbors,
are waiting for me to become.
Click Here!

Revisiting The Empty Nest

Filed under: GrannyXGrouses, Family Matters @ January 30, 2008 12:42 pm by healthiacynthia

empty nestThis morning I walked by the room that ordinarily has its door shut and I caught a glimpse of the little Dora* Bed in there with its baby pink sheet and the big old elephant puppet flung up where the pillow goes. Like long-distance grannies everywhere, I blinked back a tear. All I had to say to my husband for him to immediately get it was: “that little bed”.

When our sons left home to live ‘away’– for real– I grieved their speedy transition from infancy to adulthood. I also worried a lot about their safety out there in the big world where the magic of mommy didn’t work. When I was really worried I had dreams where they were helpless babies and where I would sit them down somewhere and then not be able to find them again. The dream would morph into a nightmare that left me feeling blue and disconnected the next morning. My older son’s marriage to the lovely M. brought me out of the initial loss and his fine fathering reassured me that he was a competent, capable adult.

A couple of years ago we moved to this island to be near our younger adult son. In fact, he moved in with us and we went blissfully about our lives together, sometimes even attending community events as a ‘family’. I guess down deep we must have known that a man in his 30s generally doesn’t stay with the folks forever, so we were not TOO surprised when he upped and moved to live in a sort of communal farming situation in the East. He is happy and doing what he does well. He’s only an email away.

But back to missing the little granddaughters… part of the poignancy of loss involves their tenderness. Will they even remember us when they return here in June? I mean, A1 will know who we are because we phone occasionally and she spent quite a lot of time with us, but little A-too barely got to recognize our faces… she was three months old when they left on January 13th– she’ll be 8 months old when they return. On the other hand, both of them are getting to spend time with their other granny, (nanay).

I am ever so grateful to be a grandmother. I can barely imagine what it must be like for many grandparents who ‘lose’ their grandchildren to permanent re-location and/or through divorce and other interrupters to family unity. I typed ‘re-location’ but maybe the word is actually ‘dis-location’ because it seems to me that grandkids and grandparents who are forced apart experience a painful dysfunctionality, a torn bond, if one even existed in the first place. We live in this ‘global community’ and it does seem to mean that we will continue to be separated by great distances. Email is fine, and voice mail is finer, and webcams are lovely, but cuddling a real, flesh-and-blood grandchild is the absolute best!

*A Dora bed is one of those plastic theme items that was inspired by my granddaughter’s favourite video heroine, the hyper-active little Latina, Dora the Explorer.

Tech Glitches in non-Tech-ese (grrrr)

Filed under: GrannyXGrouses @ June 27, 2007 12:56 pm by healthiacynthia

Hmm… looks like Blog Poll is down or something…. Meanwhile, people are pouring in to do the poll that I have on TWO sites (the other being at http://grannyxpress.blogspot.com) and it smacks of my old days on Modblog.com just before it went…poof!…

I am also having a really difficult time with an old flatbed scanner that I would like to use to do some copies of photos for a couple of family projects. It’s an Epson Perfection 1250. My son said that it is “toast” but I have revived it before (have no idea how– magic, I guess) and I want to see the same thing happen again. Everything is all plugged in and stuff. I tried different plug-ins on the front and back of the tower, too. My Camera/Scanner wizard just brings up menus for Cameras (who knew Epson made digital cameras?). Without my son around (he’s in Saskatchewan visiting, and then maybe on his way to Quebec to help build a house) I’m up the creek without a keyboard. Can anybody else help? (yeah, right, like somebody out there did a search on “help damsel in distress with her Epson Perfection 1250). I don’t mean to sound like a pwinseth but I really want to get at this NOW.

~Impatient Granny C.