Where Did September Go?

My courtyard garden on September 20.  The rose bushes predominate in this overview, but all along the sides and in the center, those pollinator attracting perennials are blooming.

Lavender

 

Anise Hyssop

Pineapple Sage

 

 

Ice Plant

 

These are only a few. 

 

Last year, the first frost arrived on October 22, so I am hoping I have a week or two of bloom.

 

I was making my Annual Retreat from August 8-16,  and then school started. The first day of classes was August 21.   This semester I am teaching three classes:  First Year Symposium, Introduction to Poetry, and Christian Spirituality.

It's already the end of the first quarter.  The classes have been quite wonderful. The freshman comp class in particular has been the most engaged and engaging group I've had in a long time.

 

The weeks have sped by with classes each day and many weekend activities as well as my garden -tending.

 

I also have had another medical misfortune.  On September 6, I began to bleed from the bladder.

It's not continuous and it's not copious, but it is still happening.  So the weeks after September 6 were also filled with Doctor appointments, CAT Scans, blood work , and urinalysis.  I don't go to the Urologist until November 7, and I am glad of it, for I know that after the "in the office" appointment, he is surely going to schedule me for a cystoscopic exam, which I dread. 

Of course I have been Googling the symptoms and lab results.  I think it will turn out to be another sort of radiation damage from 2009.  Radiation: the gift that keeps on giving.  But so far I am living a somewhat normal life and not minding it.

 

Our country has suffered three major hurricanes:  Harvey, in Texas; Irma, in Florida; and Maria, in Puerto Rico. These have been devastating.  Right now Number 4, Nate, though a little less ferocious, is flooding and battering Alabama.  Here in Maryland, we haven't had rain for 24 days until some arrived today.

 

 

The other catastrophe in the United States is the mass murder/shooting in Las Vegas last Sunday, with 58 people killed and 500 more injured.  These episodes just get worse and worse, and still a strong majority of our citizens want the gun laws to stay as they are.  To me, it seems that so many of us are glad that so many others of us are killing each other off. 

 

 

Which will bring me to my next post...