I didn’t get any writing done last night, but I did get some done this morning.

The picture at the top of the header was the view out my window when I opened the blinds this morning. It looked like it was trying to be spring with the dew coming off the leaves. Just look at the droplet of water hanging there. It wasn’t fooling me any. Though it certainly was reminiscent of spring. I wish.

After lunch, I headed out to rake leaves. Emboldened by the warmth and the shining sun, I decided to work on my garden too.

That was a mistake.

I pulled up the zucchini, squash, and jalapeno which were dead from the cold weather. For the moment, I left the flowers. I still have some that are blooming beautifully. Also still in the garden is the broccoli. I thought I’d had the last harvest, but several more heads are still growing happily. I’ll have to take a picture before I cut them. After them not doing anything all summer because of the heat, I’m just amazed that they are still going.

Anyway, here’s a before and after shot of the yard:

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Same yard in the all three shots. In the first picture, there’s a bit more of the yard. Near the middle at the top (right behind the car wheel) you can see a tree (the main offender of this year’s leaves since the maple tree – which is close to being a 100 years old — got trimmed this year and thus had few leaves). The same tree (the main offender) is in the upper left of the last two pictures. It took my son and I an hour and a half to get the front yard all cleaned up. It’s usually a three hour project (sometimes multiple times during 2-3 weeks) and we don’t get it all done as well as we did this year. We ended up with 15 lightly packed garbage bags of leaves. Usually it’s 20+ bags and they are heavy.

That dark shadow in the first 2 pictures is from the old maple. The slight shadow across the bottom of the 3rd picture is another, young thin maple who was ready to lose its leaves in August when we had the cold snap. It was confused for a while, then dropped all the leaves it could the moment it got cold.

Then I went to the garden as I said and that’s where I got all tight trying to bend over and pull weeds. The back yard still needs raked up, but that’ll happen, probably a could days from now when I stop aching. Especially my shoulders. Wow, are they sore. Valerian for me tonight.

I should probably go put my hands in the massager now, maybe read while I do that, so hopefully they don’t ache too much in the morning. At least this task is done for the year (I hope). This is probably my least favorite thing to do, so I’m glad it’s behind me. Now I can get back to writing. Assuming my hips let me move from this chair (grin).

Until next time!