Orthopedic Adventures.

3-3-13 SHORT HILLS: It’s been awhile, I know, sorry for the gap. And speaking of gaps, I had a torn Achilles tendon repaired a few days ago and am now quite immobile. My right leg is in a cast from the toes to the knee with the toes pointed downward. I hobble around with a walker clunking from room to room. The right toes are allowed to touch the floor but not bear weight so I have to hop, hop, hop, which is tiring.

At first, I was using crutches, but I was unsteady on them, almost falling over backwards one time. Crutches, when you sit down and lean them against the desk, immediately fling themselves on the floor behaving like petulant teens. Picking them up, or anything else on the floor, with a cast on requires a balletic move I call an orthopedic arabesque. The walker, when you sit somewhere, stands obediently at attention just as you left it.

Other pieces of gear I have discovered include a shower chair, a cast cover that one puts on before putting themselves on the shower chair, a basket I tied to the walker for anything I need to carry. With two hands on the walker, you can’t carry a pencil unless it goes in a pocket, or the basket.

In two weeks I come out of the cast, hopefully, and move to the next cocoon, a hinged boot. The boot is adjusted to the angle that my foot makes with the floor, and it is cranked up every week until the tendon is stretched out. That process takes another six weeks or so and then, ta-da, I emerge like a butterfly to begin PT.

In case anyone forgot that this is a Garden Blog, let me say that I bought tomato and sweet corn seeds, anticipating a new gardening season in VT and a new, mobile Gardener.

March has occurred once again, on schedule, and the days are noticeably longer and the afternoon temps, in NJ, are in the forties.

The sun’s Geographic position back on February 21 was at about 12°S. latitude, overhead at Lima, Peru, where we were last month. By April 21, the sun will be overhead at Managua, Nicaragua, 12°N latitude. On March 21 the sun crosses the Equator, beginning the northern hemisphere summer. In that sixty day interval the sun’s geographic position moves through 24° of latitude as the earth tips from southern hemisphere facing the sun to northern hemisphere facing the sun.