Spring Forward . . .

Time to spring forward - I set all the clocks ahead last night except for my clock radio - I though I had set it, but I must have punched one button wrong.  It's set now.

Yesterday was massive Stick Patrol in the yard.  I did half an hour on Friday when I got home from work and before I lost the light.  Then yesterday I started at 6:30 and worked until 9.  The former owner of my home had a great love for lava rock.  I have been picking it out of various locations for 12 years.  I got another bag full yesterday  :-D  I took a break and then did another half an hour in the back yard before one of my cousins came over for some computer assistance in his job search.  We worked on that for about three hours.  All the online applications are extremely lengthy and they take a long time to fill out.  I think we got four done in three hours.  It would have taken him four days to do it on his own, and it's easy for me so I'm really glad to help him with it.  He has some good prospects for full-time work.  He's also a hard worker and a very kind and likable guy.  I hope that he will have his choice of opportunities.  Any place that hires him will be lucky to have him.

Then we went back out to the back yard and he helped me for another two hours of Stick Patrol until I was worn out.  My cousin pulled the cement cover from the dry well, and we made sure to clean it out - and I had two bricks that we used on the rebar to get the cement cover to be nearly straight again.  When we were done, we had to sit and use screw drivers to get the mud out of the soles of our shoes  :-D  Throughout the day I had been doing this every time I needed to come back in the house:


:-D  Necessity is the Mother of Invention.  Two Bizios bags knotted around my ankles did the trick quite well!

I got us some pizza because my cousin likes it, and we drank a beer and watched old westerns on MeTV from when we were kids.  We always loved the westerns  :-)  It was a very nice afternoon and we both enjoyed it.

I started with Step 1 of the Scott's 4-Step Lawn Care Program yesterday.  Unfortunately I had the spreader set wrong initially, so I hope I haven't croaked the front lawn  :-D  However, it did rain all night, so I'm hopeful that all will be well.  It was pretty simple to do it myself.  I got all four steps upfront and a mini spreader on Friday - Ace was having a sale if you got all four of the steps at one time!  Yay!  So I will be ready for step two in about 4-6 weeks.  And now that I have the spreader figured out, I'm sure it will go more easily.

I really need to mulch the beds in the front of the house.  Really I need to mulch the beds everywhere- but the mulch I like is very expensive and it doesn't go very far. So, I'm waiting for it to be on sale.  I might pick up 10 bags now to make the front of the house look nice.  And really, that's my whole point this year.  The front of my house has not been looking very good for the past couple of years.  I'm hoping with the lawn program - and I'm going to patch and seed the lawn probably in June - that it will begin to look a little better.  It's still a little too cold to seed now, and with the Step 1 I just used, any seed would be prevented from germinating.  So - probably next year is the year my lawn might look a little better, but at least I'm getting a start on it now  :-)

I have one sleeve done on my Fine Sand, but no knitting got done yesterday.  Obviously  :-D  In fact, I had a good long soak in Epsom salts in my soaking tub after my cousin left.  My wonky knee seized up on me twice after sitting for too long with it bent, so a soak seemed in order.  Had I not done that, I'm relatively sure I would be in very bad shape today  :-D  As it is, my hammies are a little tight from all the bending required for Stick Patrol, but I'm none the worse for wear  :-) 

And now, the backyard is a pond again in the rain.


But most of the sticks are gone  :-)   And the basement is dry.  You can't really ask for much more, can you?  :-)

This morning I watched a program I had DVR'd called The Kate - it was a concert by Rickie Lee Jones.  I love her.  I've always loved her.  I saw her on Saturday Night Live when she hit in the late 1970s.  I remember she sang her hit Chuck E's in Love, but she also sang a song called Coolsville.  That was the diamond.  She is a poet on the order of Bruce Springsteen. Her first, eponymous, album has stayed in rotation for me still - all these years later.

Here's Coolsville from it:


And here's another of my very favorites of hers - Satellites:


 Here is yesterday's Amaryllis:


And much to my surprise - I didn't notice this yesterday - there are at least two more flower buds on that stalk!!  These two photos were taken from the same angle, so you can see in this one that that red bud rolled over and out toward the sun between yesterday and today.  You can clearly see two more buds there to the left.


Comments

Michelle said…
My, you do have a lovely space behind your house, with your own backyard and the land beyond!
calicokitty6 said…
The amaryllis is beautiful. I'm excited to see when the bloom actually opens all the way. :)

My husband used the 4 step on our front lawn last year and it looked really nice. My neighbor has a landscaper and asked who we were using. (She's not happy with how her lawn looks).

I don't bother planting flowers. My husband doesn't look and runs them over when he is mowing the lawn. I tried the little plastic edge fencing to guard them with no luck. I even planted wildflowers seeds (the kind you just toss in the soil and cover up) and they hot mulched too.
A :-) said…
Michelle - that's actually sort of to the side - that's my neighbor's wayback yard beyond the trees - all of his spruces are diseased like mine were - but he's never going to do anything about them until he has to. My yard does extend further back - even a little farther back than his. It is a great yard, but the drainage issues are not ideal - as you can see :-)
A :-) said…
Debbie - really good to know about the 4-Step program! I'm crossing my fingers. I've let the Creeping Charlie get a bit out of hand, I'm afraid, because it doesn't really bother me - but my lawn is in terrible shape at the moment - I should take a photo out front :-D

I have bulbs - that's about it. My cousins the Master Gardeners bring over stuff from their yard that they don't want. As long as I don't have to take care of it, i.e., it has to grow on it own, then I'm fine. Lots of daffodils (they are the only things that the deer won't eat) down by the coach light, and some Stella D'Oro daylilies up near the house, as well as some Naked Ladies (AKA Surprise Lilies/Resurection Lilies).

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