May 25th, 2006 - Did I really say this felt good?
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.
In the afternoon, we puchased tomatoes and peppers at Stein’s. Eric mentioned to the neighbors on Tuesday that I hoped to buy heirloom tomatoes, but they hadn’t seen any. Then Dave stopped at Steins to get cherry tomatoes and ran into heirlooms. He stopped over just after my nap to tell me about them. I am so thrilled. They were expensive–about $3 each–but larger plants than I normally buy. I was so excited I forgot to buy a cherry tomato plant; Eric might go back to pick up a hot pepper to grow and he’ll find one for me then.
Through Freecycle, I’m getting rid of a bunch of metal pipes we had sitting around. Most are from chain link fences we removed. A guy on the list asks periodically for scrap metal. I’m happy to let him take it, even if he gets money for it. (We have a scrap metal recycling facility in town. But the hassle of figuring it out isn’t worth it to us. At least not right now.) He said he uses some of it and recycles the rest. Last night, Eric and Dave started taking down the old clothesline poles. Dave has a sawzall, which helped with the cross pieces. The supports, unfortunately, are in cement; not sure if the Freecycler will take them, or if we can take them to Block Iron ourselves. We’re nervous about putting them in the SUV as our back gate doesn’t lift up (it opens like a regular door). Bit by bit our backyard is shaping up! woohoo!