In a follow-up to last year’s post, the landscaper and her team arrived about 8:00 yesterday morning and when I returned from my meeting around 2:00, they were already done. It’s amazing the way they rolled in; only four of them and she is right in there with them. For anyone not familiar with the soil here, digging is very difficult due to lots of coral rock embedded. It was also a day of 95 degrees. The last time we refreshed the yard, we had her work around the existing plants, many of which were in containers for two reasons. First was the difficulty in digging and second is we have some really nice containers. Some of the wooden planters though were in bad shape – it’s a tough outdoor environment and we weren’t doing the digging, so those were all replaced with in-ground plants.

They were among almost forty new plants and all of them were pruned, trimmed, etc,. We are set for when more butterflies and allegedly finches will soon appear, not to mention possibly buntings and hummingbirds. She had of course rattled off the names of all the plants when she came to do the survey and I couldn’t follow them all. Milkweed, I know of course and the lemon tree to replace the poor one battered by Hurricane Irma. There are already eggs on the milkweed and I’ll be patience as biology works its way through the stages. Now, we’ve always had butterflies;  simply not the mass of plants as now. In having also previously explained my lack of gardening skill, I have committed to keeping three of the container plants trimmed so they don’t become root-bound again. Hubby has the tougher job of pruning the numerous palms and the Pygmy date does have thorns. The landscaper claims that by transplanting the banana plant from the container into a new spot, it will eventually bear fruit. Not that I like bananas, but Hubby does so maybe with only one tree we won’t be overwhelmed.

Photos will follow occasionally as things settle in.

In what has been an even more crowded week than was planned, the annoyance of my right blinker burned out hasn’t helped. The Fusion was in for almost ten days between finally taking it in for the airbag recall repair and a couple of body issues to be dealt with. Somehow in that mix, the fact my right blinker wasn’t working didn’t get put as an item to be repaired. I actually wasn’t certain it was faulty until day before yesterday when I took the time to check it. Sigh! And here I am a faithful user of blinkers, which of course anyone driving behind me since whenever it went out no doubt lumped me in with all those other  careless drivers. There is a saying in NASCAR of “no right turns” and in a somewhat humorous mode, I have tried to use routes that indeed either have no right turns or have dedicated right turn lanes. While I’ve been pretty successful, it definitely hasn’t been 100 percent. Hubby has been working everyday, but it does stay light longer and he has been on morning boat rather than both boats a couple of days this week. I, however, haven’t been here with the car. So, today was to be the day. I said I would get the part and he would put it in this afternoon. There was in fact one bulb at the dealership. This is also the afternoon that rain, then more rain, occurred. It looks as if it may be passing. Anyway, the other aspect is Ford has decided they will no longer make Fusions so I guess when the time comes for a replacement, it will be another model of whatever. Unlike my sister who repeatedly buys a Camry, I’ve never bought the same type of car back-to-back. On the other hand, I really do like this car. Ah well, I wasn’t planning to make a change for a while yet anyway. Who knows what they’ll have out in another year or so.

In taking a friend for surgery yesterday, there was a lengthy delay and as we were in the Pre-Op area, we were able to observe what was a professional group with what seemed to be an excellent dynamic. It was quite busy as patients were prepped and there was not much spare space, yet the nurses and technicians flowed around each other with smiles and friendly bedside manners.

There were some tasks involving what they called Enhanced Recovery Protocol and after about the third thing, I asked about it. The protocol has been in place for not quite two years and includes some different medication combinations and placement of pads on a patient’s feet and another portion of the body to cushion contact during prolonged surgery to help avoid bed sores. The medication was to reduce the possibility of nausea from anesthesia and I don’t recall now the purpose of the other one. There was also a different way to measure baseline breathing capacity to ensure it was as good post-surgery. The explanation for the protocol was to shorten the recovery time, especially for patients who would be going home alone. This was for outpatient surgery and while everything was supported by studies and research, it would make sense that it will depend on the individual as well. In this particular case, the delay in surgery meant being late in the evening when everything was completed and an overnight stay was ordered as a precaution. There was no complication from the surgery, but it had been nearly a fourteen hour day when travel time to and from the hospital was included. Since this particular patient has had other out-patient procedures, it will be interesting to see if any measurable difference in recovery is noted. I hope so, of course, because shorter recovery is always a good thing.

Yesterday completely got away from me as I am trying to take care of a number of things before I leave on my trip. We always watch Jeopardy and before the show started, Hubby said a rumor was going around that the reigning, record-breaking champ would be beaten. I’m not sure who leaked the news, but it validates the concept of, “Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead”. There are things that are difficult to keep to oneself.

Anyway, if there happens to be someone who didn’t know, the guy as champ had won for 30+ days, racking up more than $2 million. He was short of beating the highest winning record by $60,000; however, he achieved his amount in half the time of the record holder and he broke the record at least once of the highest single day amount. The guy created quite a controversy because he is a professional sports gambler. He also has an incredible body of knowledge and made few errors. He knew some really obscure things. He bet aggressively and often hit all the “doubles”. That was his actual undoing last night as he got the first “double” so early in the game, he couldn’t bet much extra. His female opponent got both in Double Jeopardy and answered them correctly. Both opponents basically matched his pattern of going after the high dollar clues first and in the entire game, there was only one wrong answer. That is not something you see often.

Quite simply, he usually outplayed his opponents by a factor of about 10:1. You had to feel a bit sorry for people who finally get their shot at Jeopardy and came up against someone like him. One of his habits was to bet odd numbers for final jeopardy, and Alex of course asked about that after several days. Each number he bet was done to add to his total to give an ending number that had some personal significance to him. It will be interesting to see if the new champ continues to play in this pattern or if she will follow the more traditional method of going through the clues without deliberately seeking out the “doubles”.