On Monday morning, I was up at 5AM and got my post up, then watered the rest of the seedlings. I hadn’t heard from my general helper and they were too dry. Then I got chores done and headed out to the back 40 at 7AM for some more “pasture gym”: walking and bending to pick up wood every other step.
I got the tree line cleared to where the trees stopped on the north side. I wasn’t sure I’d make it that far.
Tom took this drone photo back in 2020 of the back pasture beyond the sandhill. You can see where the trees end on the left. I walked along the fence looking for branches, down the side across the back and up the other side to the sandhil again. (The sandhill is where the brush pile is in the middle of the pasture.)
New West – wallflowers
I was pretty exhausted and had to walk the rest of the way to the car by the barn. When I got in the house, I stripped off and put everything in the washer and got in the shower (poison ivy you know…). After that I ate a bowl of cereal and at 10:45AM I went back to bed.
Crabapple – bird’s nest
My helper had left me a message she could come for noon, so I asked her to come and feed the seedlings and house plants, as they were pretty desperate for water.
I got up just before noon after an hour’s nap and she had just arrived.
Crabapple - buds
I got the kitchen cleaned up so she could do house plants and inside seedlings while she feed the outside seedlings in the cold frame.
Crabapple – flowers opening
I rested a while then the mailman (poor man!) arrived. I’d ordered granite meal and Brix Blend basalt amendments and they had free shipping. There was 200# of each. I wondered how they would ship that much for free. Well, the poor mailman found out.
The basalt arrived first (brown taped ones), each 40# bag apparently just about fits in a priority mail box. The granite arrived on Monday (white boxes) and the mailman wanted to know if there were to be any more. I said not of this stuff, at least.
He’d get them to the top step of the porch, or the first step and I had to schlep them inside. This is as far as I could get them. I’ll need someone stronger to haul them out to the Tonka garage. But before they can, we have to empty it out a lot to get them into the stacks.
That wiped me out so I went and rested again. My general helper finished the plant feeding. I had also ordered some decent quality T5 lamps for the plants, but when they came in the box was badly damaged. The tubes hadn’t broken, but all but one lit clear. The other 7 were a dark muddy color when lit. So they had to be returned. I had her do that next.
She left at 3:30PM and I REALLY wanted to go back to bed but didn’t want to trash my sleep. I got up from my chair at 4PM and got laundry started and back in my chair. I sat in my chair until supper time, heated up leftovers, did chores and went to bed.
On Tuesday it’s to rain most of the day, so I can rest. I really should pay bills as it’s the end of the month. Hopefully I will be in some shape to do that.