I called Becky today, thinking I had given her lots of family time and asked how the week's sales when at her new spice shop. It was then I learned today was Tuesday and, for her, the week had just started. Really? I thought it was Friday. Or Thursday. Or something other than Tuesday.
Mostly, I have not noticed the passing days. And I have not tried, again, to know which they were. I have done some puttering about the yard. Spring still has not fully come ... or perhaps Winter has not yet fully gone. When Firewood Man came to mow the other day, it was 42 and far too cold for me to be outside. His mowing was done in record time.
One day, I saw my neighbor outside weeding, so I joined her for a short while. At the end of the raised bed, there was still a bit of ground cover growing. I could not simply dig it out with a shovel because this stray tulip was there, too.
Whilst pink is not my most favorite color, I adore these tulips because of their fringed edges. I have six strays, altogether, to relocate to the bulb bed once they are finished blooming.
Several of the tulips have been knocked over, so they are not easy to see. My sheepgoatratbastardpuppydog has taken to tromping through the tulips and alum in order to avoid the GREEN grass.
I still think these look like something from Dr. Seuss.
Sitting there weeding my one foot square patch of soil, I chuckled at the constant buzzing of the bumble bees and honey bees arguing over the flowering thyme. I couldn't capture any of them or even figure out a way to focus my phone on the flowers, but you get the point. Two long swaths of pink flowing from end to end on the side beds. Lots and lots and lots of buzzing.
I napped for a while and then went back outside again. This time, I worked on the rose of sharon bushes, which have already leafed so beautifully despite the harsh winter. Since the weeping cherry failed to really bloom, I was worried about the rose of sharon bushes. Last summer, they still had not really recovered from the drought the year before.
During the drought, the buds on the bushes never opened. That fall and even throughout the winter, I thought I should cut them off. Most were brown, but all still had some bit of GREEN to them. I never did. So, last summer, the bushes barely bloomed. The other day, I noticed something (also not in focus).
[Phone cameras need a macro setting.]
Here, if you squint and use your imagination, you can see the buds opened last summer. But they clearly were dead. All the buds had split open into four sections, but never flowered. Whilst they are all dried and no longer GREEN in any fashion, I still thought it would be best for the bushes if I removed them all. I did so over a couple of days.
The smoke tree clearly survived the winter! The last to see is the butterfly bush, which looks dead as dead can be, but two of my neighbors have them, too, and their's also look rather dead. At the base of my smoke tree is this really cool plant—the name of which I can neither type nor pronounce—which is the sole survivor of Amos' watering attempts. I wish the other two would have made it, for the curve of the bed. However, this is almost triple in size, going into its second year.
[Ignore the fact that I need to mulch again, please.]
At night, Amos likes to sneak into the forbidden bedrooms to lounge atop the beds. The other night, I found him in the solarium and snuggled with him for a while, looking at the night clouds through all the windows. I noticed, then, that all my wintering plants were starting to look beleaguered. Whilst they all thrive in the solarium in the winter, it was as if every single one of them decided they were starving for fresh air. So, yesterday, in brief spates of work, I moved them all to the front porch and puttered about in the soil where needed.
Sitting on the bench is ever so much nicer when the table center piece is in place.
My string of pearls were so happy in the solarium, they doubled in size over the winter. So, I very carefully repotted them and then relocated the plant from the porch capstone ledge to the stand by the door for proper string draping. I've always killed my string of pearl plants before, so I am thrilled this one is happy in my home here in Indiana.
I don't know what this thing is, but my mother brought it to me the summer before last. Then, it was a mere three strands of green succulent. Now, after a second winter in the solarium, it is bursting at the seams. I cut the roots, but left it in the pot.
I have always killed any jade plant I thought to have. This one was a small, single branch, about the side of the one sticking up in back. It had languished for three years in Alexandria never growing at all. My mother, when I moved here, put it in this corner, where it has sun, but also shade. Two winters in the solarium and two summers in this location and the jade has greatly increased in measure. I took it out of the pot, cut the roots, replaced the soil, and repositioned it, since the jade plant is so bent over. I also tucked in a different rock for support.
The other two pots are ones I created from cuttings from my giant spotted begonia. The past two summers, all I have done is killed any plant in the shade, in these pots and two others. It struck me, this winter, that the begonia requires shade, so I started rooting pieces. I now have these two small starts and a fuller pot (that I forgot to photograph). Sadly, the door to the airing porch blew open this winter and fried the original ginormous plant that I have had for some 15 years. SIGH.
I also decided, this winter, to try and root more of the Wandering Jew plant that has been languishing in my kitchen. It started from a single stem broken off of Becky's plant when she was putting it in her car August before last. These are my dinky hanging baskets that I hope will make the transition from glass jar of water in a window sill to soil and become baskets I can keep all year round.
Pitiful, I know. Each basket has three roots strands. If they take, I thought to keep snipping and rooting until I can fill up the baskets a bit more. Then, I shall have free hanging baskets and ones that I will not have to replace. I just love having a pair of hanging baskets flanking the large pipe wind chimes on the front porch.
I have 14 empty pots from all the year-round sedums I've had for eons. I killed them all by not thinking to bring them inside once the temperatures fell near and then below zero. I just wasn't thinking. So, the last task I did was to empty them all. That way, the dead plants would no longer mock me in my failure as I sit out on the front porch. Once I am most certain that we will not have any colder weather (and, hopefully, I get some birthday money), I plan to fill them all back up with six pack sedums and just wait on the babies to grow over the next couple of years.
All the puttering came after I had already tried (and not all that successfully) scrubbed the winter dirt and yellow pollen off the front porch. And I achieved a goal I have had since I moved in December 2010: I took off the storm windows from the large window so that I could clean the outside of the window and the inside of the storm windows. Yes, I should have tried to get help.
The hard part of the disassembling was that the top pane was screwed into the bottom pane and thus both had to be taken apart together. Carefully.
I just love the beveled glass. But this was one dirty window. All parts of it.
The big part.
The small part.
Really, really, really dirty parts. This was on the third round of Windex!
But, oh, my! Even on an overcast day, the living room became immensely brighter once I was done!
When I took down the lace shear curtains to clean the inside, I was appalled at how dirty they were. Filthy despite the fact that I have cleaned them at least once since moving. Maybe twice. Down came all the first floor lace curtains and into the washing machine they went. With them down, I decided I must clean the inside of all the first floor windows. One task all too often leads to at least one more ... if not others.
I would really like to tend to all the windows on the first floor, which I think can be done with a ladder. However, it would be more work than I could do myself. Even with a solid surface upon which to stand, I was struggling to get this one window cleaned.
So, this afternoon, Amos and I spent a few hours on the front porch—fan on high—admiring the few plants that are back outside and watching a gazillion children ride their bikes up and down the street. The baskets still look pitiful, but everything I put outside already looks so much healthier. I worked hard to ignore all the empty pots.
Puttering.
Cleaning.
Days passing.
Not thinking about who am ... and who I no longer am.
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