March Madness

I am fairly worn, and it’s only been 3 days of minion duty. In addition to my usual household duties, I’ve cooked, loaded and offloaded dishwasher, changed the sheets, done the laundry, cleaned the kitty litter, and put the garbage out. First time in years. I’ve also helped Grant with compression socks (my sitting on floor to do so), changed his clothes, climbed over the couch to set up heating pad, etc. No complaints, glad to be able to do all this. Just more than I’m used to. He can hobble with the walker from bedroom to living room to office. Fortunately, March Madness has started, with UF ranked #1. Much, much basketball to keep him occupied.

On the upside, since I’m not going anywhere, I have worked hard in the yard. I moved the 2 small pines,  perhaps long leaf (Pinus palustris?), that volunteered to grow exactly under the power lines in our central front bed. After reading about how to dig them up and hoping they hadn’t developed a long taproot, I dug around their trunks and wrestled the pair with as much dirt as possible into the wheelbarrow, not easy since they were on the incline right next to the swampy swale. They are now planted near our north property line. All I can do is water and cross my fingers. There is a smaller one I’ll move soon which is enmeshed in the thorny wild lime and a large one I waited too long to move that is also directly below the power lines. Duke Energy can deal with it when it gets too tall.

As if that wasn’t enough to make my shoulders ache, I dug out enough sunshine mimosa to find the plastic wood frame I placed to hold my blue-eyed grass. I reseated it and replanted grass starts in it after hoisting  a 25# bag of potting soil into the wheelbarrow to schlep over to top off dirt in the frame. Plus I’d had to fix the wheelbarrow’s wheel, hammering it back into place since its attachment is missing a bolt. Ibuprofen is my friend.

I’ve also had time to paint, my goal to do daily. I’m quite pleased with the little painting of water drops on a leaf.  Meh on the sunset painted from a live on-line class. That was too fast for me, so I plan to repeat since I can pause the replay as I need. I have also really enjoyed making neutral swatches and simple paintings using just red, yellow and blue. Color theory is marvelous. So much to learn, so little time.