Sorry, not much time today. Since today is supposed to be the last warm sunny day of the year, I chose to spend it outdoors. I hung all the sheets on the clothesline. Duncan brought the laundry outside for me and helped. I worked in the garden, pulling up roots, cutting down stalks and pruning roses to within an inch of their lives. I scattered the rest of the sunflower seeds for the birds and attempted to break up the giant root plates that held the sunflowers fast through September and mostly failed. They can rot and compost into the ground over the winter and then in spring Ben can break them up. I leave all the leaves and plants laying in the garden and let them break down on their own. Over the winter they will compost and then in the spring we'll load up on sheep manure and till everything together. It makes the best growing soil.
I'm good at this.
The yard is open and barren now, especially without the roses. The tea rose bushes I cut down from ten feet to two. The ornamental shrubs get a little more tender loving care and they are a foot tall now with chosen hardy stalks to grow from next year. The carnations will bloom right through the snow and I ate all the remaining strawberries while I pulled all of those up too. The raspberries are coming along. I don't have to touch those. And all the plants out front are hardy perennials that require little care, if any.
It's done for 2016.
The boys made up the beds fresh with flannel and electric blankets for those who love to be cozy and with cool cotton and light duvets for those who don't. We had the fireplaces cleaned and checked. We cut a few big limbs off a tree that has overgrown it's welcome and was touching windows on the house and on the garage and we had the landscapers come back and extend the corner of the brick driveway that heads around the barn so that Sam and Caleb both will stop clipping it with their cars, as they park on the high side, up on the left of the garage while the rest of us drive down around in front of it (the garage is across the driveway from the side of the house, above the boathouse) and park facing the side of the house.
So yeah. We got a lot accomplished today and as such, I will now attempt to not fall asleep face-first in my dinner plate.
