One of the best things about being retired is that you can lie-a-bed as long as you like and yesterday being a cloudy day I could have done that. (Gray clouds inspire cocooning in me) However, when one owns a dog who loves her walk-abouts that's a no go. Gotta get up. So I worked gingerly thru the AM aches and pains to get the body going, swallowed a cuppa, found my shoes, got the keys, the leash, made sure I had doggie bags in the front pockets and a comb in the back pocket.
SHOE ALERT!
By the time I get to the shoes Laney knows for sure she's going somewhere so I usually leave that for last because once she sees the shoes she starts with the full-body wiggles and practically leaps with joy. Not a bad thing of course but she tends to knock things off/over with her tail. By the time we're outside she's in total full-joy mode and leaps and prances and wiggles all over - makes me smile to see how happy she is. I don't have to ask her to sit anymore - she volunteers her sit, her down, and her roll over a couple of times before I insist she sit long enough to get the leash on her.
So. We get back from our walk and my joints are nicely lubricated, I'm feelin' fresh and happy and wanting to hug the earth - should've caught it then. But I never do. When I'm in hug-the-earth moods I tend to lose focus and overdo things a tad. Instead of going inside for breakfast I decided to alter the size of the water basin under the apricot tree. In no time flat I'm sifting the store-bought dirt thru my fingers to get the rocks out. Naw, the dirt doesn't come with rocks, that's Laney's doing. The native dirt in most developments in southern Arizona is covered with crushed rocks - 'bout an inch or so. According to spec each yard here is to be covered with 2-3" of rock - yeah, right. I'm convinced the developer of this place figured nobody would read the specs. Some people put grass in the back, but not many as grass is a labor intensive thing in the desert. We have whole platoons of people keeping The Green, well, green. Plus, our water supply is ground water - ice age ground water they say, some call it fossil water.
When Laney came to live here she quickly zeroed in on the nice clean, soft Miracle Grow dirt. And why not - it beats those sharp rocky bits all to hell. I know she likes to lie there and I had cause to believe yesterday that it may serve as her commode. But that's a cat thing - right? Had I been wearing gloves when I sifted my way thru the stuff, I might not have noticed the soft round things in the dirt. Actually, I'd probably have squished them thinking they were just clods of dirt, which would have yielded the same intelligence...I stood up for a stretch somewhere along the line and noticed the bougainvillea is starting to leaf out so I went into the garage for the pruners. No dead stuff to get rid of. We haven't had a single hard freeze this year, in fact I don't remember covering at all which means not even 32 degrees - tho we did come close last week. Bougainvillea is happy just about everywhere so I put three plants against a naked south-facing wall when I moved in. But I later made the mistake of putting the apricot tree too close, so by the end of summer parts of the bougainvillea have reached out and gotten tangled in a few of the tree's branches. I trim the bougainvillea back every year hoping to get a more bushy look but by late summer when I just refuse to work outside, there are always a few branches that make it to the tree. So why am I just now getting around to pruning them back - - {shrugging}.........
After the bougainvillea was looking nice and neat I decided all the leaves that've collected against the wall at the bases of the three plants should be cleaned out because it's too perfect a spot for a snake. The baby quail won't like the new look much but after last fall's encounter with a rattler I decided it was time to get off the stick. And I figured it was time to pull out the soaker hose which had been buried, unused, under the detritus that had collected there for about four years. God only knows how many snakes have occupied that space over the years. I know there was at least one because I found it's shed.
Because all my special rocks and discovered artifacts were also pretty much covered in the same black gunk, I pulled them out and cleaned them and the space they occupied along the garage wall. Enjoyed that. So many memories in those chunks of rock and stone tools I've found over the years. Probably spent an inordinate amount of time on that bit.
un-retouched natural summer light @sundown
We lived on 40 acres out in the desert when Jesse was growing up. It was an area traditionally visited by the Tohono O'odam (aka Papago) during the summer to harvest the fruit of the saguaro. But that's a whole other blog. Anyway, we loved exploring the property and found lotsa neat stuff. I have a really beautiful point fashioned from yellow rock that I found one summer solstice. Because it was the solstice and I'd felt led to it I kept it on me all the time - until the day I forgot, took off my bra and watched it fall to the tile floor and break in half. Now it lives in my jewelry box.Nice. That's all very well but it's getting late and I'd not finished up under the apricot tree. Ugh. I was really tired and hungry but I knew if I went inside I'd stay there. So I finished up under the tree, moving the rocky edge and spreading the new Miracle Grow dirt. Didn't sift thru it tho. I may get to it another day. Or not ;)
By the time I went inside I was totally wrecked. Totally. Never mind all the normal spots that ache when you do yard work - even the bottoms of my feet and the palms of my hands hurt. Really hurt. What to do? Food? No, too tired unless -- maybe I can find something I can carry into the bedroom. Nope. Gotta lie down. A couple of hours later when my spine had fallen back in place I went into the kitchen for cold chili (yeah, I still have some) and colder beer. All my muscles were still screaming at me so I grabbed the whiskey I'd used to make cakes for the soldiers at Christmas and poured myself a double, neat, which I took with four asprin. I don't know if it relaxed my muscles or not because that much booze put me to sleep. Lovely. :-)
