March 27, 2014

Yard Work

Thursday,  March 27, 2014

Thursday was another cloudy, windy day.  First thing in the morning, I spent 30 minutes or so working in the back yard watering plants, filling feeders and rearranging the placement of some feeders and hanging baskets.

The red-winged blackbirds continue to flock to the feeders from dawn until sunset.  I love to be able to hear them.  They are noisy, but their call is a high trill which is a very nice sound.

At the office, I spent the day on accounting things and some filing.  There is a large pile of papers awaiting my attention still.  It was not very busy in the office, and Ron was in much of the day.  His work computer crashed last week and so the man from True Solutions who does our computer work spent the morning working on setting up his new one.  Ron's morning was spent working with the man to get the things he wanted, set up.  We both agree that although it is nice to have a new computer, the transition days are hard on the blood pressure.

In the afternoon I had an appointment with our General Practitioner for a "Wellness Check-up".  Why do they call it that when their number one goal seems to be to find something wrong?  Mostly what it seems to be is a list of referrals to other doctors for assorted checkups.  For the next few weeks we will be doing that.

Our GP, Dr. Bhondi is a very pleasant man and seems to do his best to take good care of us.  As I have mentioned before, he is the one who saw me first after I lost my hearing and that was my first time to meet him.  He and I enjoy the fact that now I can hear him.

It was 3:00 before I was finished there (for a 1:00 appointment) and I stopped to pick up some lunch on the way back to the office.  Ron left for a couple of jobs once I got back and also to get my car inspection done.

On the way home I had several errands to run: things to mail at the post office, a prescription to leave at the drug store, etc.  Once I got home I took my things in the house, and headed out to work in the yard.

We have several bougainvillea bushes along the side of our property by the street.  They have not been cut back in way too long.  Last year all our health issues prevented us from doing the normal late winter pruning.  Ron really doesn't like to do it and the bushes always seem to attack him.  Even though he wears heavy gloves, he comes in scratched up all over.  I don't know the difference in our methods of attack, but I spent an hour and a half cutting back one of them yesterday and survived unscathed.  I cut and hauled and sweated up a storm.  It was good to be out there doing something constructive.  Or would that be considered destructive?

The only negative was that as I cut the branches, I could tell that the birds have been spending a lot of time in there and I know they won't be happy.  In fact at one point, I could hear a large group of them really fussing at me and encouraging me to go away.  Sorry little birds, but it must be done.  Some of the branches were hanging out in the street 6-8 feet.

As I said, there are several of these bushes and I only got one and a small portion of the next one done, so I hope to be able to keep working on them a little at a time for the next week or so.

Once I went it I had to get cleaned up before I could fix supper.  Ron came home about the time I had it ready.  We ate and worked some on the current jigsaw puzzle.  By the time I went to bed, I had made great progress.  This puzzle is a photo of ice cream cones of all colors and sizes.  I am down to 3 cones that are all similar in color.