Gardening Day

I had the best time today, working in my yard! I'd been waiting for the rain to stop and the grass to dry a bit, so that I could mow it, then discovered that I needed a new spark plug in my mower. Argh! So that was taken care of the other day and today it was time to mow. I couldn't believe how wet the grass and ground still were! The rain, rain, rain, snow, melting snow, rain seem to have added quite a bit of extra moisture to our landscape. Not a real problem. It just meant that I had to empty the mower bag about three times more than usual and that the grass took up a lot more room in my big garbage cans than I would have liked. The worst part is that they weigh a ton! Our trash service doesn't pick up lawn waste again until Thursday, so I hope it doesn't rain again in the meantime. If so, those cans will be impossible to roll down the street!

I actually filled both of my cans with more than mowed grass. I pulled weeds, dug out this annoying ornamental grass that had sent runners all over my flower bed, emptied the now frost-bitten plants (I spread the dirt in the beds) out of my many containers and picked up some leaves. I also dug a really big hole to transplant a hydrangea into and planned to lug a bunch of mulch from the side yard into all the beds. Needless to say, after several hours of working, I didn't get around to moving the plant or the mulch, but I still feel good about today's accomplishments. The weather was so perfect - blue, clear sky, autumn breeze, cool temperature, no humidity and lots of sun. Much better than the 100+ temperature and almost as high humidity days that I was working in about a month or so ago. That was no fun at all!

I get a big thrill out of being able to have a day like this mainly because I have a really bad back that restricts my participation in projects of this type at times. It takes me several times longer than it used to, to do things and I have to sit and rest my back every once in a while, but I'm a determined little bugger and keep going until I know I've pushed my spine to its limit. Then it's time for a nice glass of ice water, a warm shower and a little admiring of what I accomplished. Yep, it was a good day! Hope you had a great day too! xoxo, Leena