More Yard Work

I can't believe it's been a week since I posted last!

On Saturday, I wanted to mow again, but couldn't get the mower started. Instead, I crawled around under the roses and nandino, cutting down four small volunteer trees of some sort. I say small, but they were over six feet tall, just not very big around, although two of them were too thick for the long-handled pruners. I had to use the pruning saw. I also did a good bit of pruning on the rose bushes. I was wearing a sweatshirt and gloves (along with jeans, socks and sneakers, of course), but got a couple of scratches on my wrists.  When I was getting ready for bed that night I found one quarter-inch 'bruise' on my right arm. Last year both arms would have been purple.

Rose was with me all day today. We did some work on and around the two pine trees in the yard. There were some volunteer trees of various kinds under them that I was cutting, mostly with the long-handled pruners. Three or four were tall enough that they were growing up into the branches of the pine. I couldn't get them out from my position on the ground, so I managed to hand the bases to Rose and she pulled them out. I also sawed off the limbs that the boys next door broke about four years ago. They were about 8 and 10 at the time, and tried to climb the tree. The tree wasn't big enough at that time for climbing. While I was doing these things, Rose was using the regular pruners and trimming off tips of a bunch of branches. I figure whatever she could do wasn't going to harm the trees. She also dragged some of my larger trimmings to the neighbor's burn pit and piled her smaller cuttings into the wheelbarrow. She really was a big help, and it kept her occupied. (Everyone thinks my house is boring.)

Again today I was wearing a sweatshirt and gloves. I got one half-inch bruise on my right arm and two on my left. One of the ones on the left got scraped open and bled for a bit. Fortunately, the sweatshirt is navy blue, so the blood doesn't show. It feels good to be able to do these things, even though I don't have the stamina I had a few years ago. I just hope I can continue to mow, prune, etc.

This was a busy week with the little ones. I think I picked Lexi up from school three times and Rose, twice. I also took each of them to school once. That means I was in Mayfield every day. I visited the Senior Center and the Art Guild a couple of times each. I didn't go to Paducah at all - I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find a parking space with all the visitors in town for the quilt show. The weather was also a factor.

We had a lot of rain, wind, lightning and thunder. The ruts in my driveway have been rearranged, and my herb garden was a pool most of the week, but I have no damage. Bardwell, the county seat town, which is about eleven miles from me had a lot of wind damage last weekend. Last I heard, they were still trying to determine if there was a tornado there. I think it was Sunday that the county emergency notification system told everyone who lives near a creek to prepare to evacuate, although I don't think they ever did require evacuation. The county school didn't have classes on Monday, but did go the rest of the week. Milburn is high enough that we really don't need to worry about flooding, but from here it goes mainly down to the Mississippi River, about fifteen miles away.