Thursday, July 14, 2005
The Return of Screaming Muscles
Yikes one would think that by now my muscles would be used to the labors of yard work. Not a chance. Here it is 5:30 am and I had to get out of bed because of the soreness in my legs, back and hands.

Last night I came home from work and had a quick bite of dinner and out to my yard I went. I spent 3 1/2 hours out there cutting grass, trimming, watering, dead heading and pulling weeds. The tough part came with the weeding I think as this was not weeding in the flower beds, I have a gravel driveway which it seems overnight was becoming covered in weeds. It really didn't look like a big job and I figured that I would pull the big ones only, since my dog kept getting tangle on them. These did not come out by a mere good tug though, I had to go and get a hand trowel and dig down in order to get them out. I used the hand trowel as opposed to the spade figuring it would be easier on my back since I could sit and do this. Wrong. This is probably just as bad or maybe worse since I ended up doing a lot of stretching,digging and pulling. Near the end off this chore my hands were cramping up, however I now was on a mission so I kept working until I got them all. I must admit the driveway now looks awesome and I have resolved to get those weeds as they come up instead of waiting as long as I did this year. By the time I finished all this it was 9:30 so I then came in and took a hot shower which I am sure helped with the sore muscles or I would of been stiffer this morning. Notice I blame this all on hard work and not the fact that age might be a part of it.

On the flower side of things the black-eyed Susan are in full bloom so the back corner of my garden near the gate looks like something other than a black hole, the baby's breath has bloomed at the same time as my rose bushes. And joy oh joy the white climbing rose in the front has opened and the red one on the other side of the arch is going to bloom as well.



The first blooms on the white climbing rose bush.




The promising bud on the red climbing rose.



Yellow roses and baby's breath in bloom.



The happily blooming Black-eyed Susan cheering up a corner.



Echinea (don't know how to spell that) I think among my sweet peas and the Russian sage peeking through.

All in all things are starting to look good although the baby's breath and rose combo are not quite the way I envisioned, but maybe next year when the rose bushes are a little more mature and with a thicker planting of baby's breath it will look better. I think maybe the area around the rose bushes just needs to be filled in more and I did put in a low growing wildflower mixture that of course has not appeared yet so that may help. I was unsure of how tall or wide the baby's breath grew so I planted sparingly but now I can re-plant them next spring thicker.

In the meantime enjoy your gardens and keep looking in between the weeds for the unexpected flowers.
"May All Your Weeds Be Wildflowers"
Planted by crazygramma at 5:34 AM 3 comments
 
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