My Lady Of the Blue Hydrangea

Some of you may remember my post for the GPP Street Crusade #22 - Pay It Forward. I wrote about my neighbor Katherine and how we had been exchanging kindnesses back and forth this summer. Well, I found out today that Katherine died on September 9th, at the age of 51, after her long and brave fight with cancer.

I hadn't seen Katherine in a few weeks and I thought about stopping by every day, just to see if she needed anything. But it just didn't happen... What I didn't know was that she was in a hospice, being cared for as she went on to the next part of her soul's journey. It feels so strange to me that I didn't know she was dying and we didn't even know that she had passed on until David saw her husband coming home today with a big funeral bouquet. We checked the obituaries on line and found out she died on the 9th. Sadly, we even missed the visitation which took place yesterday. Katherine and Stephen have been our next door neighbours for four years. So strange that we lived so close to them, have a friendly over the fence relationship with them and yet when this intense life event occurs, we didn't even know...

I was remembering back to my childhood neighbourhood and thought about how we all knew our neighbors so well. I couldn't imagine my parents not knowing if Mrs. Sooter or Mrs. Olive who lived on either side of us had died. It just goes to show how isolated and disconnected from our community so many of us live. Anyways, regrets won't do much good today. I guess I have to be thankful for the connection that Katherine and I were able to share this summer. I am just so very, very sad to know that my beautiful neighbour has died.

My most crystal clear memory of her is about one day this summer when I went over to have a glass of ice tea and to say thank-you for the beautiful bouquet of blue hydrangeas she had left for me on my porch. She was fresh from the shower as her short cropped hair was wet. She was dressed in clean white from head to toe, in soft cotton pants and a flowy tunic. Though she was very thin and drawn, the first thing I thought was how beautiful and angelic she looked. I told her so, and she laughed. I don't think she was feeling that beautiful that day. But she sure did look that way to me. My neighbour Katherine, my Lady of the Blue Hydrangea. It is comforting to know that your are now free of your pain and that your beautiful spirit is free to fly again. I will always think of you when those flowers bloom...

Hating Thy Neighbor's Mess

So the hubby and I live in a pretty yellow house on Orange Street. Colorful, eh ? It is a really nice street. We and our neighbours really try to keep things nice. You know, the usual lawn mowing, flower planting, keeping our yards tidy and keeping our house value up by making improvements were needed.

Unfortunately, our back yard abuts a not so nice street that has quite a few rental properties on it. Why is it that some renters are so much less caring about how their homes look than home owners ? Don't they want to live in a nice environment , even if they don't own it ? Why is it that some renters are just plain slobs !!!!!???

This is the view from my big back deck :

What a mess ! It looks like the whole contents of a garage is dumped in the yard! It has been like this (and sometime worse!) for at least two years. The tree between us is growing which helps a little but this is the view we have whenever we use our deck. These neighbours hang out in their yard a lot, and they have a clear view onto our deck which makes me feel like I am being watched whenever I sit out there. They are also very noisy, use foul language incessantly (even in front of their kids)..... I could go on and on but that's too much rant as it is (not to mention the incriminating photo !). The noise and stuff is really hard to do anything about - they are just living their noisy lives and they do usually stop the noise by 11:00pm in the summer.... But the view ! That was something I was determined to do something about this year so I could use my own deck with pleasure and in privacy!

You can't build a twelve foot fence - maybe you can but that wasn't in the budget or the vision! The hubby and I decided on a privacy curtain - something that wasn't too permanent, didn't cost too much and would look okay from our side as well as theirs (see, we really are nice neighbours to have !) We used metal pipes screwed into flanges, a cable with a turnbuckle, some pretty outdoor table cloths cut to size and some shower curtain hooks to create this :

The next thing is to change the back of the bench to have less space in between the cross beams with means adding 2 more 1"X6"X12' to the span. That part of the project will be done tonight ! But I am happy with our handy work so far.

I finished the curtain yesterday and set to work by adding my plants to the deck. Hopefully, frosts are over ! Let the spring really begin ! I have seeded some babies in the house for a few weeks - cosmos and morning glories. I pulled our dahlia pots out of the basement where they slept for the winter. I also brought out the three year old hibiscus that graces my studio window during the winter and her new friend, the one year old mandavilla, that survived the winter indoors as well. I added a couple on pots of annuals as well, just for some color until the other stuff comes in. It still looks a little bare right now but some sun, some water and some time and my fun, PRIVATE summer time oasis will be in full bloom !

Mandavilla, sleeping dahlias, pansies

Daisy-like annuals (?) and cilantro seeds

Baby cosmos with pansies

Hibiscus with annuals