Trees, Dirt, and Bathrooms

The husband’s brother is currently staying with their dad, who has been in and out of the hospital over the past couple of weeks. BIL texted me over the weekend and asked for a couple of masks for them to use. I have another batch done, so I packed some up and will send them off this morning. A friend of ours who is a retired nurse is working with the local hospital to determine what kind and how many masks they may need. When she finds out, I’ll probably start working on those. I don’t want to make more until I know what they want. It’s great that there are so many patterns available so they can be customized to each facility.

The weather was gorgeous this weekend and I wanted to be outside helping the husband cut up fallen trees. We have been together long enough—and cut up enough trees together—that we can do that job without much verbal communication. That’s going to be an ongoing project just because of the number of trees we lost. We worked in the front yard on Saturday and in the pig pasture yesterday. One of the trees in the pasture fell across the fence onto our neighbor’s property. We got it cleaned up, but the fence will need to be repaired soon so we can put pigs out there this summer.

It’s good to be active, but I feel a bit like the Tin Man at the end of the day.

He also helped me pull the black plastic (thank you, Clifford!) off one part of the garden, where we’ll be planting potatoes:

and move it to another part of the garden:

I am not sure yet what’s going to go in this spot, but the weeds were awful here last year and need to be beaten back. That is my lavender hedge at the left. I pruned it last fall, before the snow, and I think that was a big help. The plants aren’t as misshapen as they usually are in the spring, and they’ve already started greening up at the bases. The section to the right of the plastic is where the potatoes were last year. The plants were mulched with straw, which kept the weeds down in that area. After digging the potatoes last fall, we spread the straw around. It decomposed nicely over the winter and that section looks good. My goal is to stop tilling altogether. All that does is make the weed problem worse.

[Our relationship has always had too many generals and not enough soldiers. We’ve mostly gotten around that by having a strict division of labor and staying out of each other’s departments. When we do have to work together—tree-cutting being the notable exception—he has a tendency to start barking orders, at which point I usually just stop and look at him. We were spreading out the second piece of plastic and he said to me, “I spend all day giving orders and you spend all day not taking orders.” Keen observation, that.]

We got the water line set up to the greenhouse. I’ve got to get at least the tomatoes and squash planted this week. I’ve been putting off working in there because the weather has been so nice. I’ve also got to get ahead of the strawberry bed this year. I worked on it some last year, but it needs more attention.

While we were outside, DD#2 was working on a project of her own—repainting the bathroom off the laundry room. She is just as incapable of being idle as her parents. We set her up with some paint and a decorating budget and let her go.

We painted the bathroom that turquoise blue about 15 years ago. It has been in desperate need of an upgrade for a while, but to say that I dislike decorating is putting it mildly. She is painting it in a Sherwin-Williams color called “Bagel,” which is also the color we used in the laundry room and upstairs hallway. She ordered a new shower curtain and some towels and they should be here this week. I loved having little kids, but adult children are very special.