I am sore beyond words today. We spent a little over four hours doing garden clean up. And yard clean up. And clean up of clean up. Since the last several weekends have been so rainy, we had a lot to catch up on around here. First, we cleaned up all the left over bits and pieces from the deck and walkway construction. We piled the decorative stones that were left over into the cart behind the riding mower and took them up to the flower garden, where the large thick stones will help prevent erosion. My butterfly garden continues to turn into a sand trap as more sand from the walkway above leaks into it with every rain storm. Never again will I even think about using a sand base for a garden pathway, particularly on a slope. What in the world was I thinking? Argh!
Next, we took all the lumber out into the woods and tossed it into the odd little crevice in the woods. It’s an area that looks like a giant crack in the ground and goes down about 12 feet. We’ve found bits and pieces of old farm things there, like rusty oil cans and bits of old paint cans, so we know the last people to have farmed the land used it as their refuse pile too. But we only put our old lumber bits and pieces there and a few old pallets, hoping that nature will reduce them to chips over time.
We put landscape fabric around the forsythia we’re trying to grow into a hedge at the end of the driveway, mulched it, and moved all the big rocks we’d placed around the driveway back up into the flower garden so Hubby could weed whack the edges. As soon as I turned over the first stone, I knew we’d made the right decision to do our clean up; a black widow spider was hiding under the rock. Since it was cold, she moved slowly and I was able to kill her, but several other rocks revealed black widows of around the same size. I think clearing away the old rocks and bits of lumber from near the house was smart. I hate to use sprays, but I have used them in the garage to keep the spider population down as well as the insects they feed upon. If they don’t have anything to eat, they’ll go away (I hope). I made Hubby get his work gloves to pick up the rest of the rocks. Black widow bites we do not need around here…
I also pulled up the spent vegetable plants such as the peppers. We opened up the pickled peppers I canned this fall, my first project, and they were so yummy I could have eaten the whole jar on the spot! Best of all, they didn’t upset my tummy the way raw peppers do…definitely a keeper. That recipe book is excellent. It is called Preserving the Harvest and I have made the awesome pear butter recipe from it that’s infused with ginger and orange (and we can’t get enough of that) as well as the peppers. I’m including a link to it, below if you are interested.
I had cleaned the first floor of the house in the morning, and it was Hubby’s dad’s 81st birthday, so I’d baked a double chocolate-chocolate-fudge cake. After collapsing on the sofa in front of a roaring fire, chicken roasting in the oven and the smell of double chocolate-chocolate-fudge cake suffusing the house, Pierre curled up next to me, and we snuggled in to finish reading a great book “Abraham Lincoln: A Man of Faith and Courage.” I highly recommend this book too – it was a wonderful collection of stories about one of the most amazing men America has produced, Abraham Lincoln, stitched together to form a biography of sorts.
So that was my day. Today after church and shopping in town I’m heading home to plant bulbs. We have to dig 40 holes and stick 10 bulbs in each. I know I’m going to be sore tonight, but what a feast for the eyes that will be this spring!
