Taking the day off

I have been hard at work in the garden, partially just because I wanted to get started planting things, and partially because of some other stuff that I won't get into just yet. And, as I had the place to myself for most of the week, I did actually get a lot done, as I was getting up with the sun and going to work (for fifteen minutes intervals) through most of the daylight hours. So, on three of those days, in between breaks, I got about five or six hours work done. So, maybe twenty hours or so for the week, not counting that I had started on it the previous week, or tried to start working the week before that, or that little bit that I managed to get done before the great snow of 2010.

Anyway, I have been transplanting things and picking up trash and emptying pots and filling pots and moving dirt from one end of the yard to the other, washing rocks, putting down a few stepping stones, etc.... I go to bed tired and wake up hungry and between moving this and that have watched most of Stargate SG1 season 8.

And it is not finished. Still, I do see a lot of progress. I think to myself, this part over here actually looks nice. If the weather would cooperate (and my would health hold up, and my husband would stay out of town, and I could find a magic ATM that dispenses money without deleting anything from my account), I could make this whole place look nice and have flowers and yummy vegetables and everything.

Of course, most of that won't happen. But the weather might be okay for several days next week, and I plan to keep working on it.

I have made such progress that one of my nicer neighbors came and almost hugged me.

The yard still needs to be weedwacked, which is something I just cannot seem to get the hang of, so my husband will have to do it.

Anyway, I had planned to do more of the same today, but it was just too windy. See, I blame the fact that I did not get more done earlier on the rain that came (dirt I can deal with, though slowly, but mud is entirely different), and today I used the wind as an excuse to spend most of the morning shopping.

I got an early start on the shopping. First there was breakfast at a 24-hour taco place at around seven this morning, then I looked around Lowe's, and then I went to Walmart to buy day lilies. I guess that I waited too late to buy those day lilies, but then I thought I'd go to a different Walmart. I found Pardon Me and New Toy. New Toy wasn't what I had planned to buy, but I decided that two Walmarts in one day (without a sale) was enough. And then as long as I was in the general area, I might as well go to Home Depot too. By the time I did all that it was time for lunch, so I had to stop at McDonald's on the way home.

And then when I was unloading the car, I noticed the wind was a bit much. I decided that the plants could wait a while. About half a hour later, it was worse. The trash had not yet been collected, and some of mine was starting to get blown down the street. While putting it back on the curb I briefly lost my glasses.

At that point I decided that I was done for the day.

A bit later, I went to my brother's place to watch cable, and then he took me to dinner.

Well, it was nice to stay clean all day.

I didn't buy that much (though my wallet is much lighter), but I did a lot of window shopping. There is all this stuff made from recycled tires that I will be buying as soon as I win the lottery. And I saw this product for sale at Walmart. This is the sort of thing that you buy if you have a lot of money and want to do the new Square Foot Gardening, while I have no money and sometimes try to do the old Square Foot Gardening by buying scrap lumber. I would love to have several of these, but they cost about forty dollars each. (I spend about four dollars each.)

Still, go and look at this on their site. I'm not sure about their calculations, but it is fun to play with.

Eventually, I want to have no grass in the backyard. I would rather just have pathways between the garden beds and trees and such. This is not impossible, as I do not have a giant backyard. Still if I am not going to have any grass, I will have to have a lot of stepping stones or mulch or rubber mats and such to replace the grass. That would take a lot of money, and a lot of work. But I am thinking that if I just buy a bit every time I am at Home Depot getting something else, that I would eventually get it done, and the work would not be so terrible, and I would not notice the money so much.

Speaking of not noticing the money so much, I am trying to remember where it all went to. The stepping stones have gone up to 1.27. I bought six while they were on sale for .94, and then I bought eight more. I bought one 2x6 rubber mulch roll for fifteen dollars, two bags of sand at four dollars each, about twelve dollars of bedding plants from a local independent, 2.50 on two bluebonnets, two dollars on a six pack of petunias, ten dollars on day lilies, and a bag of rubber mulch for seven dollars. The bag of rubber mulch is less than half the size of the mulch I usually buy, but it costs about four times as much. But I have decided to try it anyway, because in most places where I have put mulch, I can only see what I bought last year, maybe in some places the stuff from the year before, and the rest is gone. I'm assuming that the rubber mulch will last a lot longer than that.

So that was around seventy-five dollars, plus I've been mostly eating the dollar menu at McDonald's, so that and the taco place was probably another twenty. So I spent all the money that I had this week (just in case I had jury duty), except for twenty dollars, and I was thinking that wasn't too bad, cause I would spend the twenty on a phone card that I need to get soon. I was looking at my last twenty dollar bill and telling myself that it was okay, that of all that money I had spent (mostly on Saturday morning) most of it was either something that I really needed (like the sand) or something that I had planned to buy (like the day lilies, though I had thought that they would be six dollars instead of ten), and that my only real impulse buys were the two bluebonnets (which if I didn't buy them I probably would have just bought a second pack of petunias) and the 2x6 rubber mulch roll (which I bought at fifteen dollars after seeing it someplace else for twenty, and I figured at 1.27 each for stepping stones that I would pay about the same amount to cover 2x6, so I might as well get the rubber and have a look at it). But then as I was leaving the Home Depot I noticed that blueberry plants had been marked down to four dollars, and I bought one of those too.

So I no longer have twenty dollars left, I won't be buying that phone card til next week, and I now have a blueberry bush that I have to deal with. Blueberry plants are in the grand scheme of things, but I have not yet prepared that area where they will go, so now I have to wonder what I'm going to do with this plant until then.

At some point I went out and measured everything, but I seem to have misplaced the notebook where I wrote everything down, so I shall have to take all the measurements again. I should mark out where I want the fruit trees to go and build barriers to go around them so that I remember not to plant anything else there.

Now it is Sunday. Being all clean for a day was nice, but now it is time to get back to work.