Tick tock...

I did it!  I managed to thin the day lily bed today.  It was harder than I thought it would be, but it was also easier, not that that makes sense.

I was so intent on starting, that I forgot to take a good before photo.  This is after I used my pruning shears to cut back all the day lilies.  This is just one third of the bed, at the far end near the alley.

Last year, I did not pull out all the dead greenery, so I had a lot of that left, as well as all the growth from the bulbs since we have had such a weird, warm fall.  This is the bed after pruning and raking, before I started digging.

If you look closely, the brick edging is rotated on its side, being pushed out from the over growth of the day lilies.  At first, I went to straighten just the end of the edging.  Then, I realized that straightening it meant working my way back toward the other end and I ended up re-setting all of the edging save for a few bricks.  Whilst I did not do as good a job as Firewood Man when he put them in five years ago, the edging is much, much more straight and the bricks are are level now.

I worked until after dark, having fetched my headlamp.  If you look really closely at this rather lousy after photo, you will see just eighteen day lilies.  Compare that to the photo above, and you will see just how much digging with the shovel I had to do.  They were so overgrown that there was really no dirt between all the bulbs (which look like fingerling potatoes) and roots.  [The near end of the photo is the middle of the

It is my hope that, having never actually thinned this rather old bed, that I will not have to do the work again.  Actually, I know I won't.  Someone else will have to do so.  I also shoveled quit a bit of dirt out of the bed because this far end was about three or four inches higher than the rest of the bed.  I raked as much as I could down the bed and then add to the dirt pile from relocating the variegated maple.  Firewood Man is going to eventually deal with the pile.

I had planned to add gypsum to the soil, but I forgot.  Firewood Man is not coming to mulch until  Sunday, so I have time.  Right now, I am trying to recover from the agonizing pain wracking my body have pushed it so hard to do this work.

It is such a relief, to me, to have this final bed tended.  All of my beds are thinned or weeded or relocated and all of them (at least after Sunday) are (will be) mulched.

The spot where the vareigated maple use to be is empty.  I talked with Firewood Man about just putting in a massive rock in between the St. John's Wort bushes.  I did think I would pop over to Lowe's or Menard's to see if there are any interesting trees left.  I would adore a rock and I would welcome another visual barrier to my neighbor's untidy yard.

Call me an optimist, but I honestly do believe that this task was the last hard work I will ever have to do in my yard.  Hopefully, all I will be doing is cutting back the greenery after my bulbs are done and a bit of light weeding (since my plan was to make it easier for Firewood Man to spray my beds where possible).

Right now, I am curled up on the large sofa with my beloved Fluffernutter in my lap and the large weighted blanket atop both of us.  A fire is roaring in the fireplace and ...

... my father's clock is ticking on the wall.

Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.

I hung it over the television, which may seems strange, but I like that it across from the seating area in the living room.  Frankly, I do not think that the photo shows just how well the clock fits my home.  And the photo makes it look smaller on the wall than it does in real life.  I find that odd, and I wish that the photo did the clock more justice.

The repairman took an extra month to tend to my father's clock.  Normally, that would have annoyed me to no end, but since I wept every time I looked at it or thought about it, I didn't mind the extra time to get used to having it.  When I hung it up on the wall (yes, I used a hollow-wall anchor), I didn't weep.  I only felt grateful to have something of my father's ... to have one of his beloved clocks and to have it be the only one I remember from my childhood.

Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.