garden & storm

You'd think I would come home from a whirlwind road trip and relax, but no!

Half of my bushes out front have bitten it in the heat wave, and I couldn't stand to see all that pathetic brown take over, so I've been bushwhacking.  Literally.

This activity led to wanting to follow through on moving the border of the front garden back that I've been talking about doing pretty much since we moved in 3.5 years ago.  I'm still mid-process on that, but yesterday, I transplanted some of those forward bushes back closer to the house to fill the holes left by the dead ones.

The fanciest tools I own are long handled hedge clippers, a smallish shovel and a wheel barrow.  So yes, ladies and gentleman, I am doing all of this work old school - by hand.  It's rough on my back, but I do enjoy it.

Last night, as soon as I finished two major transplants, the sky blackened and opened up, the wind howled and I watched from inside as my backyard birch trees bent in half, like Cirque du Soleil performers.  The power went out.  The generator kicked on.  We reset clocks, etc. Then in the middle of the night, it happened again.

This morning found rooftiles galore across our front yard from the neighbors across the side street (we live on a corner).  Also birch and pine branches, a culvert full of pine needles and pine cones, and my crazy rose vine trellises on their side. 

Across the main street, our neighbors' basketball hoop took out the windshield of their car. 

So I got back to work out front, playing the biggest game of actual pick up sticks, and cut the crazy rose vines down to remove the old broken trellis I was already propping up anyway with a newer one.  I reset the new one for new vines to grow up, then dragged the old wooden trellis covered in thorny vines to the strip of scrappy trees by the highway behind our back fence the back woods. Thankfully, new transplants survived the winds. 

I currently have Mr. Cynic raking the needles and pine cones out of the culvert and wheeling them in the barrow out to the back woods.  He's really a good kid.  Don't tell him I told you. He also brought the roof tiles back to the neighbor after I gathered them.  I asked him to bring them to the door, but he just dropped them over their back fence to make their crazy dogs bark invasion.

So that's what I have been up to besides laundry that I haven't posted much on my trip North.

Ain't life grande?  Work hard, wear protective goggles.