Acres of Ability

 Searching for strawberries in the spring is a garden adventure I love to share with my daughter Kyra.  From her wheelchair seat high above the ground, she examines the berry patch, kicking her feet at every bright spot she sees.  Sometimes it’s a ripe strawberry.  Sometimes a bug.  Sometimes a dead leaf.  It’s a new adventure every day.  Kyra’s job during berry-hunting is holding the produce bowl while I pick.  Now, this is no small feat, with her arms in constant motion, her fingers reaching for the warm, bright berries I toss into the bowl, and a cat constantly repositioning himself on her lap. It’s great fun to hunt for these tasty treasures.  But, after discovering the nutritional benefits of the strawberry, you might enjoy your hunt even more.  According to webmd.com, strawberries are “… among the top 20 fruits in antioxidant capacity and are a good source of manganese and potassium. Just one serving -- about eight strawberries -- provides more vitamin C than an orange.”

Sprouted radishes! Yum! About 2 weeks ago, my daughter Kyra and I planted the “greens space” in our garden.  We used baling twine and bamboo kabob skewers to mark off the space in our garden.  I then stretched Kyra’s stiff wrist and fingers open, filled her palm with seeds, and she sowed with abandon.  She giggled wildly as the seeds blew through the air, stuck in the cervices of her wheelchair, made her cat sneeze, and fell to the ground. Some even fell into our marked-off garden space.  About a week later, we could see a bit of green poking through the ground in great bunches. Radishes! Spinach! Swiss chard! Beets! After another week, we started to thin the bunched radish seedlings so that some of them could grow and swell and become, well, radishes. Just a little tug plucks a baby radish from its crowded location in the garden. A tiny tap knocks away chunks of soil from the slim root. A quick swish of water, if you think it’s necessary, finishes the prep work. Then pop

We got a phone call this morning from our neighbor who lives about half a mile to the west of us. She asked if we had seen the roof of her barn in our timber, among the trees that had twisted and splintered and crashed to the ground during this week's storm. No one was hurt in the storm, and none of the trees (or sections of barn roof) brought down a power line. Still, I was comforted by the knowledge that I had enough bottled water, seizure medicine, and g-tube meals to last us several days. Preparation = peace.