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| Buffalo's municipal pool - it's huge and free! Notice the olympic lanes go sideways. |
Holy Cow, today I feel like my arms got stretched twice the
length they should be! I think I may have
said that yesterday was going to be a nice, relaxing day, didn’t I? Well, I lied!
It was such a gorgeous day that Rob and I spent quite a bit of it
outside working in the garden and on the lawn again.
We had a lot of ice that accumulated in several spots in the
front yard this past winter. That doesn’t
usually happen, but this year the darn stuff just sat in one spot, right on
either side of the front walk. It took
months, I swear, for those two little ice islands to melt. We tried real hard not to use any chemicals
on the sidewalk as we found out in prior years that can really do a number on
the grass. Oh sure, they say on the
container of ice melt that it’s safe for plants and animals, but they lie, they
always lie. I think they get a kickback
from the grass seed people, if you ask me.
Anyway, what resulted from all that ice sitting so long, was
a ton of dead grass. In order for the
healthy grass to start coming back out, we have to thrash out the dead
stuff. So, silly me, I decided yesterday
that I was up for the task of using the thrashing rake to start pulling out
some of that darn dead grass. I don’t
know if you have ever seen those particular rakes, they look like a medieval weapon! They have a series of blades on both sides
and you have to hold them at a certain angle or they’ll pull up everything,
including the dirt. I only worked on a pretty small spot yesterday and now I
can barely move my arms! I’m thinking that for the rest of the job, we may need
to go rent one of those thrashing mowers because otherwise, it may take me til
next winter to finish this project.
When my arms started feeling like jelly, I switched to the
regular rake and finished getting all the dead leaves out of our hedgerow that
we are trying to grow in front of the house.
Our lilac hedgerow circles almost our entire property and for the last
few years we have been trying to get it to grow on the last little bit of the
front so we can block our view of the neighbors across the street. Because it’s still sparse, the leaves from
everyone’s trees seem to accumulate there all winter. It was all packed down and starting to turn
to mulch. I had to get it out, though,
as we have that all graveled with scoria rock and the leaves were just making
it look messy. It amazed me that I got almost two full bags of leaves out of
that little area! While I was doing
that, Rob was filling the flower gardens with fresh topsoil.
We have a great system here with the landfill. Everyone takes their yard waste to them and
they compost it and screen out all the yucky stuff and then you can go and pick
up as much of it as you want after it’s turned into good soil again. It’s free if you load it yourself and only
$10 if they use the backhoe to fill your truck bed for you. Rob had gotten a
whole truck bed full on Saturday and did a nice job yesterday of topping off
the gardens. I can’t believe how much stuff we’ve gotten done so far this
spring, we are way ahead of schedule!
I also spent several hours trimming my clematis vines. That’s one of my favorite features of the
garden out front and we now have four vines spaced along the front. You have to let them sit with their squiggly
vines all winter because they put out new shoots all over the dead vines. You wait until spring to see where the new
growth is coming out before you start trimming all the branches. Ours have gotten so big, I have them tied up
to the trellises so they don’t sag in the summer. It’s a lot of work to trim them back in the
spring but the payoff is incredible. I
have several different kinds of clematis, one makes purple flowers the size of
your outstretched hand that blooms all summer and then I have several that are variegated
and a little smaller in bloom.
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| The big clematis in bloom |
So, this morning, I’m stiffer than heck, let me tell you! I
took some ibuprofen last night before bed to stave off the worst of the muscle
soreness, so I have no idea what I would have felt like otherwise! I’m not
really complaining, though, it felt so good to be out in the sunshine
working. Rob has asked me to delay
fixing dinner at the regular time for the rest of the week so he can go out
after work every evening to work on stuff some more as the weather forecast is
still saying we’re going to have lovely weather all week.
Today really is going to be an easy day, I think. I have my tanning to do, first thing, of
course. I should be able to stop that real soon if the weather continues like
it’s been going. I would much rather get my sunshine naturally, if I can. I think I told you that I have a skin
condition that requires me to get a certain amount of sunshine, or I break out
in a nasty rash. It’s one of the lovely
side effects of having AIDS. It’s called eosinophilic foliculitis and they
believe it’s caused by my low t-cell count, causing eosinophils to attack the
sebum (oils produced in the skin) of my sebaceous gland cells. The only treatment is steroids or
sunlight. Since steroids deplete your
immune system even further, I have to go with the sunlight. I’m probably one of
the few people you’ll ever run across that actually has a dermatologist’s
prescription to go torture myself in a tanning bed. As I said before, I’ve
found I only need to go twice a week to keep the rash at bay, thank
goodness. I get really tired of
slathering myself with lotion all the time to combat the dry skin that results
from the tanning. I also have to go
twice a year to get checked for skin cancer because of it. Bizarre, eh?
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| Thistle munching her big bone |
The rest of the day is pretty open at the moment. I may have to go track down some girlfriends
and see if anyone wants to go for a nice hike later. I know Thistle is ready for a nice long walk,
that’s for sure. She was not happy that
we spent most of the weekend in the front yard, away from her. She let us know by digging more of her extra
special holes in the middle of the backyard.
I guess I’ll be filling those back in today, the little cuss!
I hope you have a wonderful week and that your Monday starts
it off right!
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