Very good post, and it's interesting to hear what people have to say. What Suzy says is worth the most serious consideration. I'm confused on the subject. First, I've been gardening for over twenty years, and am on my third serious garden (there have been some minor ones in between), which I've been working on for about a decade now. Currently I have about 350 varieties of roses and about 500-600 plants, not to mention hundreds of other shrubs, subshrubs, perennials, and so on. The garden is currently about two acres in size and will increase a bit more before we stop expanding. All this is to explain my situation. My garden is many things to me. It's a plant collection, with emphasis on old and older roses; I'm particularly fond of the once-flowering old roses which are so little grown in Italy, and of the Teas, also little cultivated. It's my aesthetic experiment, my lifetime work of art, my form of creative expression, and I can't put into words how important this is to me. My garden is also a long term experiment in low-impact gardening. I want to see what happens if I grow roses and other plants with just water the first year, mulch, pruning, weeding, cutting the grass, and not much else. The results have been encouraging enough that I keep on going with the same basic practices. In terms of consumption, my conscience is in pretty good shape. The land the garden takes up was grassland, some of it very weedy and poor, marginal areas given over to weeds, and one part, the shade garden, was a mixture of brushy woods and swamp and the site of our predecessors' burn pile and dump. Our fertilizer is the old hay we use as mulch, a local resource which would otherwise be simply thrown away. The water the garden uses, not a lot, is balanced out by the increased fertility of the soil and greater volume of plant material growing on the land, which also inhibits landslides, which are a very real consideration on our property. I've introduced exotic plant species, but also look for and introduce local native plants to the garden. If I haven't made it clear before, this is anything but prime farmland I'm gardening on, and it would be either grass, brush turning to woodland, or weeds--all three locally abundant--if I weren't gardening there. My husband and I plan on expanding the garden, and we're in a hurry, as he's my chief labor force and is currently in his late seventies, and won't be able to dig planting holes and steer the motor scythe forever. We get poorer every year and I don't see how we'll be able to hire anybody to do the work he does now. Everyone has a limit, or so I suppose, and I suspect that mine is somewhere in the neighborhood of 600-800 varieties of roses. But I don't know whether we'll get there before our resources, of money and manpower, give out. I'm wondering if I can't borrow a horse to be a living lawn mower: I'm told they eat only grass. The money isn't that big a deal. Some people buy clothes or go to the movies or eat out; I buy plants, at moderate expense. I also give and receive a lot of plants, and this cooperative aspect of gardening is one of its aspects that matters to me. But I certainly do wonder at times why I'm dedicating my life to a garden that no one ever sees. This is frustrating, and it also offends, quite deeply, my sense of thrift. I will feel my garden has been a failure if it remains unknown and never touches anyone's life, no matter how beautiful I succeed in making it. It's too much for one person alone to enjoy. I'm familiar with the sensation of greed, and it's an uncomfortable feeling. In spite of the ambitious scale of my garden, my desire to keep working on it doesn't feel like greed to me, not quite, and I certainly have thought about the matter. Could I spend my life more usefully? Quite possibly, as the chief practical result of my decade of labor seems to be that two acres of dirt are more fertile than they were before. I could be earning money, perhaps, staving off starvation and power cutoffs in my old age. That would certainly be useful, to me at any rate. As far as the work I might do is concerned, how many people do truly useful work, work that benefits society? Would I be doing something more globally useful if I had a job in advertising, say, instead of going out right now to shear grass and vetch in my rose beds? So many questions, so few answers. Melissa

I'm limited by health issues and the flat area available in my hilly garden, and those areas that are flat but too hot for roses to thrive. I've "experienced" many roses that ultimately proved unsuitable for my garden, and have had other roses in other gardens, so that I no longer have that endless longing for new roses. I think I've finally arrived at that happy point where I'm satisfied with most of the roses I have. In order to have a new rose that I really covet (and the only one I can think of now is Reve d'Or, I'd have to remove another one (Mutabilis) to make room for it and that will require some soul searching. However, that is also the only area I could place my baby Annie Laurie McDowell, and it will probably take several years for that rose to have grown large enough to plant there, so I have plenty of time to consider that issue. My main goal now is to tend to the many bands I've planted in the ground and see them grow and bloom, so that my garden will finally look the way I would wish. The problem with yanking out roses and replacing them with better roses is that the latter are band plants and the garden never looks mature. I'm really tired of that now. I've recently replanted Pink Rosette, Earth Song and China Doll, and am happy to say they're doing much better. Poulsen's Pink may be next on the list if I can find a spot for it. I'm very determined not to discard another rose that has a chance of surviving elsewhere in my garden. Most of the vacant spots will be filled with hopefully tough non-rose plants so that the actual number of roses will not increase. Ingrid

Our aging crisis: the need for a dignified death - September 14, 2013 : 6:14pm In his final published work, “Mortality,” written while succumbing to esophageal cancer, Christopher Hitchens captures in one sentence the unavoidable truth of the dying process: “I don’t have a body, I am a body.” No one understands this truism quite as well as journalist Katy Butler, who witnessed the prolonged process of dying that her once-formidable, war-veteran father underwent after suffering a stroke in 2001, devolving into dementia and then finally dying from pneumonia seven years later. As doctors pushed life-support surgeries, new medications and cutting-edge interventions, Butler and her mother didn’t pray for a cure. Instead, they wished for his death, all of which is chronicled in her troubling investigative memoir “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.” The “end-of-life crisis,” or as Butler calls it “the caregiver crisis,” has hit epidemic levels as the number of Americans over 85 doubled to 6 million since 1990. Baby boomers, like Butler, must now wrangle with what to do with sick elderly parents, asking questions of themselves they probably thought would never be fathomable: What can be done when a person lives too long? And has science gone too far in its mission to ward off death? Through her experiences with her father, Butler is unwavering in her answers. “Our optimistic science-worshiping culture wants to medicalize aging and make it nothing more than a collection of specific diseases that medicine can prevent or fix,” she writes. “But no matter what deal we make with the devil, nature outwits us. Dying can be postponed, but aging cannot be cured.” These are bitter pills to swallow and many might fall in the trap of citing Dr. Kevorkian, death panels, and agism in health care as reasons why these end-of-life conversations should never start. But Butler argues that this very fear, our culture’s unwillingness “to engage with death until it is in our faces,” is what has gotten us so deep in trouble in the first place. For example, 75 percent of elderly patients would rather die in their homes, yet 44 percent of them will die in hospitals, she writes. Last-ditch defibrillators, surgeries for incurable cancers and chemotherapy that only buys a few days continue to be the norm; while what she calls “Slow Medicine” �" home and palliative care �" remains on the fringes and is rarely covered by Medicare. Meanwhile, about a third of Medicare patients will have surgery in the last year of their life and a tenth will have a surgery done in the last month of life, she writes �" costing us an estimated $158 billion to $226 billion in medical overtreatment costs. But what is perhaps worse is the emotional and traumatic toll continual care for a dying relative takes on the survivors, which is the true core of her book. When Jeffrey, Butler’s hyper-intelligent Wesleyan history-professor dad, who lost his left arm while fighting in Italy during World War II, suffered a stroke at the age of 79, he was reduced to something much, much less: “With the memories, mind and reading comprehension of a highly educated 80-year-old; the spoken speech of a 4-or 5-year-old; and the physical dependence of a boy of 6.” He could comprehend his shortcomings, and it made him “miserable,” she writes. At one point, he even commented that he had “lived too long.” The stroke devastated not one, but two lives. “The day before [the stroke], my mother was a talented amateur artist and photographer, a woman of intimidating energy, and a spectacular housewife . . . After the stroke, she cared for my father the way she cared for my brothers and me when we were 3 or 4.” At 77, her mother had become one of the 29 million “unpaid, politically powerless, and culturally invisible family caregivers,” while Butler herself joined the 24 million baby boomers now tending to sick parents. When it became necessary for Jeffrey to undergo hernia surgery, his cardiologist suggested that they implant a pacemaker. The family agreed, unaware of the downsides of what was such an (they would only later find) unnecessary preventative treatment. Now, Jeffrey’s heart would tick on, long past his time should have been up. “Not having a pacemaker would not have guaranteed my father a quick or easy death,” she writes. “But having a pacemaker deprived him of his best chance for one.” Despite the surgery �" or perhaps because of it �" Jeffrey quickly got worse. Like about one third of those over 80, he suffered from dementia. His eyesight went, then his mobility. He began misspelling words. Then he began to see things that weren’t there. He became bladder and bowel incontinent. “I woke up some morning in a fury. Why had his doctors not let nature take its course? If the pacemaker had never been implanted, I thought, my father might well have been out of his misery, and so would my mother and me,” Butler writes. The family begged his cardiologist to turn off the pacemaker, but he refused. Other cardiologists refused, as well. In 2008, Butler’s father contracted pneumonia. Knowing that sending him to the hospital would only prolong his suffering with “life-saving” procedures, they avoided calling 911. He eventually became sick enough to be accepted into hospice care, where he finally died. Here is a link that might be useful: Our aging crisis: the need for a dignified death

I liked "Wyndyacre's" post about our older homes and what they have to offer. To me, the most important part is: Some houses are just that, houses, others are a home!!!! Have lived in both kinds, and some of those houses could never ever be a "home!" There is a difference, think about it! When is enough, enough???? Probably never! Have lived in my older home for 30+ years. A single story, which is great, as no stairs to climb when the knees are aged! ;-) Went through a period when kids were at home and wished for more room, not now, it is perfect. There is always a project that one can undertake. Some can wait, like my kitchen, in favor of something else on my "mental agenda." Having recently had a barn built for my horses, that was higher on the agenda than a kitchen remodel!!!! ;-) Having bought when I did, I enjoy the huge appreciation in the value, and for So. CA, I have the room, the land (and 5/8 of an acre is a lot in my neck of the woods), the big trees-----and I get to enjoy it all. Sure, I get frustrated when some problem comes up to deal with, but.....so what!!! It is a lifestyle, and a lifestyle that I love. Wouldn't trade it for anything!!!! Guess the most important part that I have to say----I live in a home, a home that I love! Work, yes, but that is good for me, and keeps me off the streets and out of mischief in retirement!!! Have a grand day, one and all. Cow