Monday, July 24, 2017

There was no excuse not to get back to my gardening today. It was a little cool so I thought I would work at the back where the sun was the brightest. There are a lot of weeds in the cracks in the driveway but I hadn’t sprayed them yet so they weren’t ready to pull. The only other “bad” spot was up in the roses. I pulled bindweed from along the fence as I made my way up the rock wall. Once I got back into the roses I realized that a sleeveless shirt and short pants weren’t the ideal clothing for my job but I didn’t want to crawl down and then back up the wall again so I carried on.

The bindweed was wrapped around everything – roses and blackberry stems; I just tugged at it and what came out with it came out. At times I was clipping what I thought were blackberry stems and it would be a rose stem; in those cases I just told myself I was pruning the roses. It was a good time to be doing that patch as the roses are pretty much done (although we often get a second blooming) and the blackberries are just ripening. In fact I found a few ripe blackberries as I was working and they got eaten on the spot. It took more than an hour to clear out about half of the area, and almost another hour to clip down the stems and put them in a box for the dump. I was quite proud of myself and after a short break I looked out the back door. Sadly, the half of the area I finished isn’t the part you see out the door. Pat says he thinks the other half will go much faster.

I was covered in scratches on both my arms and legs so I was glad that my new pine tar and pumice soap also had an anti-bacterial and anti-fungi quality. Although it is still early I’m not seeing that any of my scratches look overly red or raised so perhaps the soap is doing its job.

After a trip to the Post Office and the grocery store (I’m still looking for a Kellogg’s cereal with a Personalized Spoon offer) I started packing for the bee tomorrow. I’m not sure what state the Library will be in so I may have to spend some time getting the books set up. I have four cards due for August and I have them all packaged up and ready to stitch. Once that was done I spent a bit more time on my O Canada project; all the pieces are fused to the fabric but still need to be cut out. Next up I have to trace the pattern onto my background fabric; I’ll do that after the pieces have been cut out so I know whether or not the pattern needs to be reversed for tracing.

I’m going to make a couple of phone calls and then I’ll do some more cross stitching.