Not Really Been A Good Year

I'm not gonna try to list everything.   Some things you don't need to know, some are boring, and I'll probably forget to mention some.

The neighbors got a yappy dog.  The Mom there lets it out in the backyard as soon as the kids leave for school.  It runs around barking all day long,  It drives me crazy when I am in the backyard.  It seems convinced it should kill me.  Which is sort of funny, because if it somehow got in my yard I could strangle it with one hand.  Not that I would, but if it died of natural causes or the family moved away, I wouldn't shed a tear.  

And I suspect the Mom doesn't much love it either because as I said, she puts it out in the fenced backyard as soon a the kids leave for school.  It must be maddening to have it in the house.  I am surrounded by dogs on 3 sides.  The yappy dog on the east, a large barky dog on the south (which desperately tries to get at me through the fence), and 2 large dogs to the west (which are at least mostly indoors and don't threaten or make much noise).  But the east and south dogs make being in my backyard less pleasant than it should be.

Taxes were a misery last April.  I fill out the H&R Block software forms, then tried to "finish" them.  I kept getting a notification that I was "not on the network".  Which was ridiculous because I was all over the internet otherwise.  I wasn't going to try to call H&R Block just a few days before the filing date, so I filed for an extention and sent the Feds and State estimated additional tax payments to be safe.

The next day, I had my annual physical exam.  Everything was fine.  But 2 days later I woke up , got out of bed and fell to the floor with terrible right hip pain.  Three days later, I had an appointment with my primary care doctor.  He got me scheduled  for a hip x-ray at the radiology lab in the same building (it's not a hospital but a combined medical center).  

Guess who didn't have an x-ray technician on staff (vacant position for 4 months)?  But the center had an emergency x-ray center a block away.  They were alarmed at the results.  They said I had either bone marrow or metastatic cancer.  I went through a more detailed series of tests over the course of a month (needed a roller-walker to get around with difficulty), and was then referred to an oncologist and an MRI specialist to have more tests.  3 month waiting list...

But the pain went away after another (2nd) month.  It became obvious that the problem was a very severe groin muscle injury that healed slowly.  I felt perfectly fine again.  

But that completely ruined my gardening season.  By the time I could get around outside, I was late with my tomatoes, corn, and beans.  I had ordered ten 10 gallon buckets (so I could put them in the sunniest part of the backyard) to plant them in and bought a small trailerload of 50/50 topsoil/compost to fill them.  But by then it was June.  I never got a decent crop of anything.

Funny thing about the trailerload of soil/compost.  I have good at basic geometry.  I calculated the cubic feet for 10 cylindrical buckets.  Looked up the volume of the nursery bucketloader.  It said I needed 2 bucketloads, so I went and bought 2.

The nursery apparently has a very wrong idea about the cubic feet the bucketloader delivers.  I filled up all 10 buckets with only a 1/3 of it.  Not knowing quite what to do with the other 2/3s, I covered the trailer with a tarp waiting for inspiration.

But before my hip injury, I had ordered about 500 various Spring bulbs.  They arrived in mid November and sat in my chilly basement.  I decided to smother the grassy weeds in the front yard island with standard brown packing paper, cover it with the trailer soil to hold it down, and then plant most of the island with the daffodils by using an auger to drill holes through when the paper was wet.  

But that's a lot more work than it seems.  Even mild breezes want to blow the paper around.  So I bought 50 thin "bricks" to hold them down.  I got the island all covered with bricked paper.  Digging the trailer soil into buckets was harder than it used to be.  I have probably never quite recovered from falling off the extension ladder in 2021.

I am happy to say that I emptied the trailer of the last of the soil mix and covered the paper inn piles and raked them carefully to smooth it out.  We are supposed to get about 1.5" of rain the next 2 days, so the paper with be soft.  I will use my auger to drill 200 holes for the new daffodils.  Drilling holes with the auger is is not difficult.  Dropping bulbs in the holes is not difficult.  Raking the displaced soil back over them is not difficult.  The hard work is done.

I scraped the trailer pretty well of all soil.  The rain will clean the trailer of any leftovers.  So I will finally be done with that project.  Next is the crocuses and hyacinths.  I think I will just plant them (rather than make metal cages).  I'm just too tired these days.  I still have some crocuses and hyacinths surviving after 10 years (that the voles have never found) so I'l just hope for another 10 years.  By then I probably won't be able to do much landscaping anyway.

Stuff

 Random and varied...

1.  I would like to go to bed, but I don't feel like I can sleep.  Yet I have to get up in 6 hours to call the vet about one of my cats (Lori) who is having bouts of diarrhea.

The 2 new ones I adopted in late November (Loki and Binq) came with some difficulties.  Loki had a head infection, eye goop, and lack of appetite.  That's all cured.  Binq was very claw-grabby and finger-bitey but with some steady and gentle discouragement (and me wearing heavy jeans), she is getting over that.

2.  I finally buried Laz last week.  He was bagged in the basement freezer for 45 days.  I just kept putting it off.  I have a dedicated Memorial Garden for past cats.  But the soil is very hard 6" deep and I go for 2'.  Took 2 days, and I have bad knees, which makes pounding on a shovel and jamming a breaker bar miserable.  But he is part of "The Remembered" now.  I miss his good days as BFF with Lori so much.  But that ended as he slowly went crazy.

I still have to build the aboveground marker boxes for Laz and pre-deceased Ayla now.  Like these...

Angled fronts for brass letters of the names and a brown resin statue on the top.  Those simple brown resin statues are getting harder to find.  Best I could find for Ayla and Laz are...

Not what I really wanted, but they will have to do.  

3.  I feel like visiting some obnoxious discussion forum (that I disagree with entirely) but I won't.  I don't live to annoy others.  

4.  Turned off the Holiday lights last nights.  This year, I may actually remove them.  I have some ideas of different ways of using lights in the yard next year.  The lights have been up since 2020, (only lit for the holidays of course).  Time to change things next holiday.  I'm thinking an artificial tree on the lawn with blue lights.

5.  With all the rain lately (so soft soil), I decided to pull the birdfeeder pole more upright (it was leaning slightly).  So I tied ropes around the feeder pole and 2 trees.  By Spring, it should be fairly well set in place.  There is a lot of clay at the bottom, and that 2' deep, it tends to keep things in place.

6.  Need to do the same with the post the hose reel sits on.  When I first set it up 10 years ago, it was upright.  But pulling on the reel pulled it forward a bit.  It still works, but the angled post annoys me.  If I rope it straight up over Winter and Spring, it may lock in place horizontally.  

If not, I will wiggle it around until I can pull it out and than enlarge the hole to set in in concrete with some rebars pounded in at angles to really hold it in place.

7.  Replanting all the lettuce trays.  When a hard frost threatened back in early December, I brought them all in.  But didn't put them under lights.  Most died.  I have to start again.  

8.  But that means a lot of cleaning in the basement.  So that is the primary task tomorrow.

9.  So many things I need to do around the house.  And most of them I can't do myself.  So I have a list of contractor projects.  Windows, doors, linoleum flooring in the computer and cat rooms, new appliances, new water heater, get the emergency electric generator hooked up, change the decrepit asphalt driveway replaced with concrete.  Well that's what money is for.

10.  Get the computer cleaned up.  Get the laser color printer printing in color again.  Get the laptop working.  Learn to use my smartphone.

That's enough problems for a year.

Invasive Vine

I have a severe problem with Periwinkle.  It is a broadleaf evergreen vine that keeps its glossy leaves in winter. It’s fast growing, making a six-inch (15-cm) thick weed-suppressing mat, rooting from junctures in its long tendrils as they spread along the ground.  It has a pretty blue flower, which saved it from immediate attacks.  Had I known what it was like, I would have killed it immediately!

It is very difficult to eliminate.  First, the roots grow several feet deep, so it just resprouts when pulled or cut.  Second, it is basically immune to most herbicides (water-based, like Round-Up) because it has a waxy coating on the leaves that repel water.  It takes an oil-based one (and those are seriously nasty).  Third, even small bits of it will rereoot on ground-contact.  Fourth, the stuff grows more vigorously than English or Poison ivy (and I have those too from the Southern neighbor).

I didn't plant it!  It spred into my yard from the yard East of me.  That place seems to get new residents every few years.  One from 2 or 3 times ago planted it and it came through the fence.  It was a relatively ignored area with a few hardy shrubs.

The neighbors after the one that planted it were able to get rid of it by mowing.  Their yard was void of any landscaping.  Constant mowing exhausts the roots and it dies.  I am not that lucky.  It is growing in a narrow strip between the fence and garden.  A regular push mower can fit, but it is a real pain to maneuver.  A gas mower is powerful enough, but mine died a few years ago and I bought a good electric one.  But it can't handle such a tall thick mat and I have to lift it around a few obstacles.

It can be killed with oil herbicides, deep repeated digging, regular mowing, or smothering under black plastic.  Through my failure to kill it where it entered the yard, it has gotten among my perennial beds.  I can't use any of those methods there very well.  I could dig up all the perennials, pot them, and watch for any growth in the pots.  I'm getting too old for that.  

I may have to redo most of the perennial bed.  It is old, and most of the flowers have been dying off anyway.  The Euonymous and Butterfly bushes need to be removed due to age or growing out of control.  The dwarf apple trees it is growing around have never produced edible fruit (squirrels and insect pests ruin them every year).  In fact, if I cut down the dwarf apples, I can use the wood in the smoker/grill.

That would allow me to get in the whole area to mow the periwinkle rototill it, and then cover it with black plastic for a year.  Apparently, that would be sufficient.  Or I could just get a landscaping service to do it.  And then replant it myself the next year.  

I can still do that myself.  And I know a lot more about good perennials and bushes than I did when I planted it 25 years ago!

But dang, periwinkle is an evil vine!

Tomorrow, the perennial bed at its prime...