May 23rd, 2006 - Garden/yard update
Last night I was reminded of how good it feels to be tired at the end of the day due to physical work. I rarely have that feeling in the wintertime. A large part of it is the feeling of accomplishment of getting the yard and garden looking so nice. We finished mulching the garden and alongside the house (ancient wood chips there, now refreshed!), and did a second layer along the garage and on most of the tulip garden (didn’t realize I didn’t have enough and Eric cleaned up while I was out there so will finish tonight). The garden makes a great playpen for Maggie (as Eric said, “The world’s largest”) while we worked. To my surprise, she didn’t play much with the mulch or the dirt. She just wandered around, having fun walking on the different surfaces, watching MomMom and Dad, and the dogs (outside in the rest of the yard). This is the only time she’ll be able to wander in there unsupervised, as I intend to plant the potatoes and the lettuce tonight.
Alongside the garage and driveway is an ~3″ strip of grass/weeds/dirt before the neighbor’s fence. It was nice grass until our dogs got to it. Now it’s usually pretty messy and quickly turns to mud in the spring. Over the weekend, I weeded the part by the garage which we mulched. This morning, I tackled the rest of it up to the gate. The back part was long weeds/grass (hadn’t been mowed) which were easily pulled after last week’s rain. The front part has been mowed and trampled by dogs so it was difficult to pull. I attacked with a hoe and within an hour, the weeds/grass were gone and the area was mulched. Woohoo! I came in to work late this morning (working late) but I got it all done by the time I normally have breakfast anyway. This gives me hope of doing other work early in the morning and still getting to work on time.
The biggest problem is having to change my clothes–what a hassle! I’ve been wondering if a pair of coveralls would be a good idea. Then I’d only have to take them off and change my shoes. Sounds easier to me than a whole wardrobe change.
May 25th, 2006 at 8:16 am EDT
[…] Yesterday, I revised my opinion “it feels [good] to be tired at the end of the day due to physical work”. But that might be because after two evenings of work, I overdid it yesterday morning. I did take the day off, but t-storms were forecast and it kept looking like they’d happen. They finally arrived at 8pm. Not knowing this, I pushed myself hard in the morning, working steadily from 6-10am except for a 15 minute break. I finished three more bed. One of them was horrid–clay-ey soil and tons of roots. It was one of the smaller beds but took the longest to do! The other two were like the ones I’d done before. Eric came out to help at 9, but he twisted his ankle on the stairs and just couldn’t do it. (We are digging up each bed with a pitchfork.) I ached all over all day (and still do) and took an hour nap midday. I had no energy to work in the evening. […]