In the past seven days, I’ve logged sixteen and half hours working outside in my yards. I’ve been out every day except Wednesday, when it poured rain. That seems like a lot, somehow.
On Friday, I moved two very large piles of brush and wood left from all the cutting I did last summer and fall, both the monster bush that I didn’t quite get all of, and the slightly smaller version of the monster bush in front of the house, which I did–along with a few smaller saplings and branches. I had a pile of pieces cut to fireplace length about three feet tall–it got big enough that I didn’t want to put more pieces on it, so there was a smaller pile of cut pieces in another spot. And there was a huge pile of brush, all the fluffy green branches from the big bushes that weren’t good for firewood.
I moved all the brush over to the far east edge of my property, which is wooded and kind of serves as a giant compost pile *wry smile*. There’s a real compost pile that gets put on the gardens, but I just make these enormous piles of brush over there and they slowly decompose over several years’ time. (My property is fertile, seriously. Stuff just grows here like a sonuvagun, it’s mind boggling.) It took many, many trips with armfuls of brush for that, and then I stacked all the cut pieces, and that took many trips.
Now I’m working on pulling up ground ivy and cutting or digging out (or both!) various brush, bushes, saplings, and whatevers. I was disappointed yesterday because I wanted to work a lot longer, but it was so effing cold!!! I am so sick of freezing my ass off, really! Someone tell Mother Nature to check her spam filters, because She clearly did not get the email that said WINTER IS OVER! This big rain storm was on the way, and I wanted to work until it started raining, but it was about 40 degrees and windy, and I just couldn’t stand it longer than about two hours. *sigh*
Today one of my neighbors called over to say hi. He said my yard looked good! I have two reactions to this:
1. Someone actually notices all my hard work! Validation! 🙂
2. My neighbors are watching me. 🙁
Okay, it’s not like I don’t watch what they do, is it? *g* Says the person who just blogged about the big branch in another neighbor’s front yard, heh. (Still there, too. If I catch one of them outside, I’ll ask if I can have it for firewood. Think they’ll say yes? 🙂 ) Today I kept on working even though a little rain pattered down, and when the setting sun broke through clouds, I saw a rainbow.
The neighbors’ kitty (still different neighbors than the afore-mentioned) will be crushed that I moved all the brush and cut wood, because she’s been staking out those piles a lot. Obviously there have been some critters sheltering under them. I’ve noticed something interesting: the bark has been neatly eaten off the small pieces of hardwood (mostly sugar maple), and even the stumps left standing. I’ve never seen that before. Something small did it, because there aren’t obvious tooth marks. It sure has been a hard winter.
The only seeds that have sprouted so far are the Brussels sprouts, which weren’t the first ones to be planted. Of the indoor seeds, they’re the most tolerant of cool temperatures, though. When I got the seeds up at Farmer’s Exchange last Monday, I asked about the lack of spinach seeds. The cashier said they were sold out–and they were sold out of chicks, too. The boxes were there but without any chicks. I asked if a lot more people seemed to be gardening and starting chicks this year, and the cashier gave an emphatic affirmative. “It’s like the 70s all over again,” I said, and she agreed–and she would know. I better not wait too long to get the onion sets and seed potatoes!
Aside from all that…with no yard work on Wednesday, I did cycling, and I needed a video. I discovered that I could watch the new version of Upstairs Downstairs online. I watched the original back in the 70s, most of the episodes more than once, and I liked it a lot. So I cycled to the first episode of the new version, and then watched the last fifteen minutes or so after I was done…and I got all choked up. Suffice it to say that I like it!
I finished going through the second edits of Marco, and now I’m deciding on fonts and decorative elements for the book block. I chaired a Readercon meeting today. I spent about an hour on the phone with GoDaddy tech support last night because I couldn’t access this journal! GoDaddy tech support is really great, but we were all stumped by this one. The only theory they could come up with was that the server this blog was on had been hit by a DDoS attack last week, and my IP might have gotten caught in a block. The tech support guy moved my account to another server and that solved the problem. But, gods…I am so done with these DDoS attacks. You know what I think should be done to each and every one of the mindless losers who are responsible for these? Did you see the ending of Braveheart? ‘Nuff said. And if they need a volunteer to act as torturer, I’m first in line. Heck, I’ll pay for the privilege! I did Full Moon ritual tonight, but no moon is visible, it’s overcast.
Tomorrow, I hope I’ll be able to get more done outside. It’s supposed to be cold and unsettled all this week. Do you think we’ll even have spring, or just suddenly jump into summer? (It’s happened before!)