January 9, 2016

Saturday Working in the Yard

January 9, 2016

Saturday was a beautiful, comfortable day, just right for working in the yard.  I was up about 7:00 and after a bit, I went to do my grocery shopping at the new Wal-Mart not far from our house.  After doing the shopping, of course the things had to be put away. 

As I had left for the grocery store, I backed the car out of the garage and just had to stop it and take a photo.   Here I was stressing over getting my Christmas trees taken down.  I love the big tree with the abundance of ornaments and a focus on red accents among the countless ornaments we have collected throughout our 50 years of marriage.  And there, beside my driveway, God had adorned my hibiscus bush with red ornaments - beautiful red blooms all over the bush.

I will continue having the red and green of the holidays throughout the year.  I still need to take the tree down, but I think that in the future, I will often think of Christmas as I back out of my garage every day and I see this bush.

By 11:00 I was in the yard working.  I had put in a flower bed for roses about a month ago and had more to plant, but had not gotten around to it.  The time had come.  I started digging and before long Ron came home and helped.  He dug up part of the bed and I told him that was enough, so he moved on to other chores.  Then I remembered that in each container of miniature rose bushes, there were 4 small plants, so I had to enlarge the bed some more.  As it is, I have probably made the bed too small, but we will see how many of the plants survive.

A chrysanthemum plant that I had thought was dead.

 

I finally got all of the new plants in the ground and I am so delighted with the ones I had planted earlier; they are looking great.  I am hoping these do well.  I had spent some time on the ponds and bird baths.  While our youngest son was home over the Christmas holidays, he worked cleaning one of the ponds and reworking the waterfall.  It is doing well and all I had to do was remove an assortment of fallen leaves.  I filled all the ponds and birdbaths after using a net to get out the leaves and twigs.

Then I started cutting back some of the plants.  I know this is not the time of the year for a good pruning, but some were in the way.  Ron was working on some large fallen limbs and two fallen trees out near the water.  After 3 1/2 hours, I took a break for a snack and soon returned to the yard for another 1 1/2 hours.  I started trimming some plants that had overtaken a large section of the driveway.  Ron joined me and he started cutting while I hauled.  By the time I quit, I was exhausted.  It had been a wonderful day to be outside.

The yard needs constant attention and it seems lately the rains have some on weekends, cutting into our time to trim the rapidly growing plants.  It was a very nice day spent in the beauty of God's creation.