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Winter Work
back to Ramblings
It’s Tuesday and on Tuesdays we’re usually off hiking in the canyon or the mountains and generally having a merry old time. However, with Butterfly wounded and me fighting a cold, we were home. “Ha!” you think, “she’ll have time to post a blog with all this free time on her hands!”
Well, let me tell you, and show you, why I’m not one of those bloggers who can churn out something every day. I knew that today, for instance, Butterfly would be thoroughly disgusted with her inability, due to her injury, to get outside and take care of business in the garden. It actually started first thing in the morning, since I’m now helping her with her morning chores of feeding the horses and walking two of the dogs to the end of the driveway for the newspapers. I’m trying to get her to give her swollen, multi-colored hand a rest and I don’t think a dog straining at the leash is the best thing for it.
Then we tackled the winter pruning and clean-up that is waiting everywhere around here to be done, because someone I know can’t stop herself from planting. We couldn’t have asked for a nicer day to work outside – sunny and a balmy 48 degrees!
This bridal wreath in my back yard was first on our hit list. I went to work with the hand clippers, which is what she cannot work with her injured hand.
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the cart looks over-loaded to me
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She got busy loading up the garden cart and hauling the cuttings off to one of three brush piles we have scattered about on the property. Think giant compost piles.
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she spilled at least half the load
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I have to stop right here and comment on that crazy hood she’s wearing. I have begged and pleaded with her to deep-six it. I think it’s just about the ugliest thing on the face of the earth. I have given her beautiful, warm, fleece hoods to replace it. She tells me none of them are as warm as this one, which she made from my high school jacket – the first “bought” jacket I ever owned.
The first thing I did with my first paycheck from my first job (at our local hospital) when I was 15 (well, after my mother took me to the local Savings and Loan and made me start a savings account with half of it), was go to the J.C. Penney’s store and buy a jacket – a real, honest-to-goodness jacket that was store-bought! I was thrilled! Until then, all of my coats (and clothes) had been made by my mother (or me), and I was too stupid to appreciate it.
Maybe what bugs me about the hood isn’t the fact that it’s so homely, but that fact that it reminds me of all the coats my mother made that I no longer have. What’s more, as we were trotting out for the newspapers this morning, it occurred to me that I was wearing my daughter’s high school snowboarding jacket. YIKES! Am I turning into my mother? Once again I digress. Back to the gardening chores …
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headed for 1 of 3 brush piles
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It’s hard to believe that the two of us can create these gigantic piles, but we do. The cattle that come visit in the spring to do some mowing help break them down, but for the most part they provide shelter for birds and other little critters.
Next we moved up to Butterfly’s house, where I knew she was really itching to get to work. Along her driveway she has a hillside covered with Mexican sage, gladiolus, roses and all sort of flowers that needed to be cut down now that they’ve gone dormant for the winter.
Butterfly discovered that although she could not work the hand clippers, she could work the big loppers. Look out, roses, here she comes!
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makes my back hurt just watching her
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Here she has finished up this rose and you can see that I took care of the michaelmas daisy that was next to it (not that you could have recognized it in its winter state).
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headed for the Quail Pile
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The first cart load of clippings was hauled down to what we fondly refer to as the Quail Pile. Lots of people who see this pile want to light a match to it, but there are creatures living in there! Birds always fly out when we approach, and the quail love this pile as a hideout. No one is burning the Quail Pile on my watch!
Some dogs I know want to know why they can’t get in with the horses to chase them and eat road apples. Yeah, I wonder why you can’t do that?
Butterfly kept working on the roses and other things that she could cut with the big loppers, and I kept working away at the things that required closer handwork. Finally all that was left was the swath of out-of-control gaura.
“You know, I read you’re not supposed to let the blossoms go to seed or it’ll spread everywhere,” she said as I studied the situation.
“Wow, ya’ think?!” I responded, shaking my head. I was trying to decide whether to even start, or leave it for another day. But start I did, and finish I did.
By the time we got gaura, roses, Mexican sage, and grapes pruned, we had pressed both garden carts and the barn cart into service.
You have to be in possession of a good set of brakes to maintain control going down this hill with a cart loaded with anything; the hill is a lot steeper than it looks. I followed with the barn cart, but was most impressed that she managed with the two garden carts. I think I’ll keep her.
Check out her throwing technique – that stuff is airborne!
It wasn’t all about cutting down dormant plants. One rose has yet to give up the ghost and was looking especially beautiful against the blue sky.
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rose behind the dormant dawn redwood
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Butterfly tells me this is a miniature tree rose name Pink Fairy that used to live in a pot, unhappily. So she stuck it in the ground next to the fence and look what happened. I see that’s it’s reached out to the trunk of the dawn redwood tree, which I think we need to stop. No strangulations allowed!
Butterfly’s dog, Carly, kept a close eye on her master while all this work was going on (if she can see through her eyelids).
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you know I don't like having my picture taken
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I'm going to pretend I don't see you
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Lucky was never far from me.
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how'd I line up that shadow?
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Celony and Barney enjoyed the sunshine, although Barney couldn’t stop yawning.
Personally, I think Carly has the best idea.
Time for a nap.
Important Updates:
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this puzzle was a tough one
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Another completed puzzle – another missing piece (lower left quadrant)! Dang!
Butterfly’s shiner is taking on a life of its own. It’s a good thing that she has a collection of sunglasses to match all of her outfits. She’ll be the talk of the town tomorrow, when she heads off for to her piano lesson (she's determined to try) and other Wednesday haunts.
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