Tonight I feel the achiness in my bones of a couple of really good days of hard labor.
I worked alongside my husband on a project today, a new piece of property, and we were working on it together. He was sanding, priming and painting the front door a nice eggplant color, and fixing up the inside and I focused on the garden. Curb appeal seems to be our focus.
While I pulled the weeds from between the California Poppies and allysum, I had intermittent visitations from two little neighbor boys. They were brothers. I asked the oldest one how old he was, and he said "four and a half".
"So", I said, "Are you going to go to kindergarten next year?"
"No, I'm gonna go to judo." Did I mention he was really cute? (From now on I'm going to call them Seth and Micah).
Later on in my digging, I found a worm, so I held it up in my garden gloved hand to show the boys. Seth held out his hand and I gave it to him. I've seen his mom next door doing all kinds of vegetable gardening, so I figure these kids are used to insects and such. He looked at it writhing in his hand and I said," Just set him down next to that flower I planted over there so he doesn't get hurt while I'm digging." He did, and we watched the little worm squiggle down into the soft earth.
Next 3 year old Micah found a ladybug. He had picked it up, dropped it, it landed on it's back on the sidewalk, he at my urging tipped it right-side-up, and it walked on to a leaf. Whew!
They showed me their little bicycles and how they could race down the hill, and I kept digging. When they came back, I said, "Look! Roly-Polys!" Seth took one, crawling from my finger onto his palm and then showed his brother how, no, it didn't sting, it tickled his hand, and then it rolled up into a ball.
I flashed back on how much my daughter loved those little critters when she was little, and how cute she said "Roly-Poly".
The idyllic scene was broken when Micah spotted the ladybug again on the sidewalk and stomped on it and Seth, outraged, kicked him in the leg. We saw the tiny yellow guts splayed out on the concrete and I quickly calmed Micah's tears, swept the little red wings over to a hole in the dirt, said, "you know, it's ok, let's bury him."
The boys were called home, and I had time to listen to the sounds of the birds and the far away train, and the occasional siren or overhead plane. I pulled out weeds with roots that amazed me. On some of them the earth clung in such big clumps I had to shake and hit them with my spade to get it off.
That brought back a memory of when I was about eleven, my mom wanted me to pull weeds on the parking strip in front of our house. I thought I did a great job, even cleaning out the gutter, that had a bunch of mud that had also sprouted of weeds. When my mom took a look at the garbage can later, she was appalled, and called me back out to have me correct what I had done. Every weed in there was heavy with soil, and there were shovel fulls of "my dirt!", she called it, .... silt that had run down the gutter from other neighbors yards, and got caught in our weeds. She made me rescue all the soil from the bin, shaking each weed. She said this was wonderful soil that we should put back into the ground, not throw away. I'll never forget that. She thought of her property as her Tara, like Scarlet O'Hara, just how my husband always says I feel about my home.
Today, when we went back to work on the house, I worked on the side, doing more weeding and planting. The boys weren't home today, so it was quiet. For a while I listened to Andrea Bocelli on my iPod, but I missed the sounds of nature. That's when I heard clucking. I had heard that the neighbors had chickens, but hadn't heard or seen them. There were about 4 hens peeking at me and softly murmuring through the fence. I love to cluck back at chickens, and I wanted to feed them something, but wasn't sure what they could eat. Suddenly spotting sour grass, I figured if I could suck on the stuff when I was little, it couldn't hurt a chicken. Besides, one of them was poking her head through the fence to get some anyway. We became fast friends when they found out I had a sourgrass connection. Five of their friends showed up. I think I'll be getting to know these chickens pretty well. I'm finding that they are pretty intense about finding food. There are partially dug holes along the adjoining fence. I think I know now why the chicken crosses the road.
I worked alongside my husband on a project today, a new piece of property, and we were working on it together. He was sanding, priming and painting the front door a nice eggplant color, and fixing up the inside and I focused on the garden. Curb appeal seems to be our focus.
While I pulled the weeds from between the California Poppies and allysum, I had intermittent visitations from two little neighbor boys. They were brothers. I asked the oldest one how old he was, and he said "four and a half".
"So", I said, "Are you going to go to kindergarten next year?"
"No, I'm gonna go to judo." Did I mention he was really cute? (From now on I'm going to call them Seth and Micah).
Later on in my digging, I found a worm, so I held it up in my garden gloved hand to show the boys. Seth held out his hand and I gave it to him. I've seen his mom next door doing all kinds of vegetable gardening, so I figure these kids are used to insects and such. He looked at it writhing in his hand and I said," Just set him down next to that flower I planted over there so he doesn't get hurt while I'm digging." He did, and we watched the little worm squiggle down into the soft earth.
Next 3 year old Micah found a ladybug. He had picked it up, dropped it, it landed on it's back on the sidewalk, he at my urging tipped it right-side-up, and it walked on to a leaf. Whew!
They showed me their little bicycles and how they could race down the hill, and I kept digging. When they came back, I said, "Look! Roly-Polys!" Seth took one, crawling from my finger onto his palm and then showed his brother how, no, it didn't sting, it tickled his hand, and then it rolled up into a ball.
I flashed back on how much my daughter loved those little critters when she was little, and how cute she said "Roly-Poly".
The idyllic scene was broken when Micah spotted the ladybug again on the sidewalk and stomped on it and Seth, outraged, kicked him in the leg. We saw the tiny yellow guts splayed out on the concrete and I quickly calmed Micah's tears, swept the little red wings over to a hole in the dirt, said, "you know, it's ok, let's bury him."
The boys were called home, and I had time to listen to the sounds of the birds and the far away train, and the occasional siren or overhead plane. I pulled out weeds with roots that amazed me. On some of them the earth clung in such big clumps I had to shake and hit them with my spade to get it off.
That brought back a memory of when I was about eleven, my mom wanted me to pull weeds on the parking strip in front of our house. I thought I did a great job, even cleaning out the gutter, that had a bunch of mud that had also sprouted of weeds. When my mom took a look at the garbage can later, she was appalled, and called me back out to have me correct what I had done. Every weed in there was heavy with soil, and there were shovel fulls of "my dirt!", she called it, .... silt that had run down the gutter from other neighbors yards, and got caught in our weeds. She made me rescue all the soil from the bin, shaking each weed. She said this was wonderful soil that we should put back into the ground, not throw away. I'll never forget that. She thought of her property as her Tara, like Scarlet O'Hara, just how my husband always says I feel about my home.
Today, when we went back to work on the house, I worked on the side, doing more weeding and planting. The boys weren't home today, so it was quiet. For a while I listened to Andrea Bocelli on my iPod, but I missed the sounds of nature. That's when I heard clucking. I had heard that the neighbors had chickens, but hadn't heard or seen them. There were about 4 hens peeking at me and softly murmuring through the fence. I love to cluck back at chickens, and I wanted to feed them something, but wasn't sure what they could eat. Suddenly spotting sour grass, I figured if I could suck on the stuff when I was little, it couldn't hurt a chicken. Besides, one of them was poking her head through the fence to get some anyway. We became fast friends when they found out I had a sourgrass connection. Five of their friends showed up. I think I'll be getting to know these chickens pretty well. I'm finding that they are pretty intense about finding food. There are partially dug holes along the adjoining fence. I think I know now why the chicken crosses the road.
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