One year ago today, James, my dad, & I sat in the surgical waiting room at Cleveland Clinic in preparation for James's tumor removal surgery.

There was so much hope that this would be James's saving grace & every treatment afterward would only have to be done out of caution instead of necessity. The whole cancer thing would be simply an insane memory in our lives.

As you know, things didn't work out that way. We didn't know then that the surgery only bought James more time.

When we saw James after the surgery, he remarked how he was so glad when he opened his eyes & was still alive.

The surgery was not simple; his tumor had doubled in size shortly before surgery. James also lost quite a bit of blood, so what was initially an outpatient procedure was a hospital stay.

We had no idea the worst was yet to come.

Throughout this entire ordeal, there was never a time when I ever gave up hope. It was hurdle after hurdle, but nothing that made me absolutely freak out. It was just something else we had to do to get James better.

 Summer garden update!

Here's a minor update on the garden.

My tomatoes & peppers are doing fantastic! I took these pictures a couple weeks ago & the garden is even crazier. It's challenging to get photos because there are vines everywhere!

I was super nervous about using raised beds because I never really had a lot of luck with raised beds in the past. In the past, the plants grew but not to incredible levels. I'm so glad the plants in this year's raised beds did so well.

I won't share all my growing secrets yet, but I think the soil was one of the most important things. My parents have a farm, so I could use their composted manure for the raised beds. The compost is super similar to the Wholly Cow Compost & Manure I used in the past. 

I have neglected the garden this year, so luck is definitely on my side. I've never had such a successful garden & have done such little work. I'm also embarrassed that I've never had such tall weeds in my garden! It's funny because I never got around to putting cages around my Roma tomatoes, so they started using the weeds to hold them up!