08.16.08
A bit of yard work!
What started out as a little project turned into a major undertaking. Daniel kindly replaced our large rural route mailbox with a new one today. I found the size I was looking for, you can put a medium size package in it, on Amazon for $32.98 with free shipping. The same size mailbox used to go for $19.95 ten years ago. Last summer we went shopping for a new one at both Home Depot and Lowe’s, but neither carried the style I wanted. The cheapest one they had that was the size I wanted sold for $80.00, so I nixed that purchase. Well this morning, the screws that held the old mailbox to the wood platform were rusted and Daniel ended up injuring his hand. He got a large blood blister on his palm from being pinched between the steel and wood. He washed his hands then popped the blister because it was continuing to bleed beneath the skin and as it enlarged it began to put pressure on a nerve. I was getting ready to go out to weed around the mailbox post and along the front bank when he came in with his injury. By the time I collected the garden tools and wheelbarrow I was going to use, Daniel had finished the installation and had started to weed.
I cut down several dozen saplings up to ten feet tall, wild blackberry bushes nearly as tall, and two eight foot orange blossom bushes that had no business growing in a bed of vinca. The orange blossoms came from seeds from the large bush next to our front lamppost about twenty feet away. We took a break and I took two aspirin and an acetaminophen tablet preemptively, knowing that when I was finished I’d be darn sore. While we were on our break, I remembered a wild grape bush that was growing into the privacy hedge along the street and I wanted to get it out of there before I ran out of steam. The grape had caused the hedge to begin to lean over towards the street. By the time I had finished, I had cut down the grape and trimmed the hedge which had grown to twenty feet tall in some spots. I haven’t trimmed that hedge in nearly two years. The hedge is still eight feet tall now. While I was at it, I trimmed back the orange blossom by the front lamppost and several branches off the Redbud tree that grows just inside the fence around the pond near the lamppost. While I was trimming, Daniel hauled the cuttings to the back of our property. After another half hour, Daniel took a break, as he was done in, so I stopped as well at his strong encouragement. I haven’t done a lot of yard work in the past two years, and I was definitely feeling it.
After I rested for a good fifteen minutes, I finished hauling the cuttings to the back yard, then I started to trim the styrax japonica (Japanese snowbell tree) because it was growing over Daniel’s herb garden and the plants have been struggling for sunlight. While I was up in the tree, I slipped and skidded down a limb, tearing a very nice brush burn up the back of my thigh, right up to my butt. I finished the trimming that needed to be done, but no more. By this time I was so tired and sore and bleeding, I left the branches where they fell and went inside to take a shower. I’ll clean them up tomorrow. All in all, we made at least twenty trips to the back yard with cuttings.
Dinner tonight consisted of leftovers from last night along with some Spaetzle I added to the remaining green beans and carrots that I again cooled in olive oil but no garlic. I cook my Spaetzle as directed on the bag, then I make a rue of two tblsp. butter and five crumbled Ritz crackers and add the Spaetzle to brown it. After dinner we watched “Miss Potter” on TV. It’s one of Daniel’s favorites.
O.P.W.