Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zippity-ay...

Oh, what a gorgeous spring day we are having here. Today started out cloudy but the sun came out around lunchtime, so we've had big billowy clouds and blue skies all afternoon. Warm, but not too warm. A perfect day, though not windy enough to suit Todd. I can hear him out in the garage sanding away on something, though, so he sounds happy enough!

We've been home puttering contentedly all day. I've been working my way through the laundry, and I gave Todd a badly-needed haircut this morning. I'm so proud of how my hair-cutting skills have developed--no more side-of-the-head bald spots!

We had tuna sandwiches and salad and grapes and Girl Scout cookies for lunch, and then I headed out to work my way through the big flower bed out front.

I have been putting off dealing with this front bed since last fall. I let it get all overgrown in the late summer, and then I didn't have the desire (or the arm strength) to clean it out. I've been staring at it guiltily since New Year's, and when you figure that it's the first thing I see when I enter or leave the house, or look out the front windows...that's a lot of guilty staring!

Friday something clicked and I went out and spent about an hour working my way down the bed, pulling out all the dead plants, trimming the dead growth off the perennials, and raking out the dead leaves. That got me about a third of the way done, and I quit early so my arm wouldn't hurt too much. This afternoon I spent a couple more hours at it, and now almost everything is cleaned out and ready to grow and for new plants to be added. Now my arm and shoulder hurt!

But three-four weeks of physical therapy and home exercises have definitely strengthened the muscles, and I think gardening in small chunks will be very do-able. I had my last physical therapy visit on Friday, and I'm supposed to try to keep from reaching over my head, and keep up with the exercises, and then if it's not substantially better in a couple months, then I'll head back to the orthopedist and decide where to go from there.

Thursday night we were taking a walk around the neighborhood and spotted two paper boxes by the curb, each one filled with a giant clump of daisy plants (with a sign scribbled on a bit of cardboard that said "daisies".) So when we finished our walk, we drove back over and hauled them home. So another part of my gardening tasks involved dividing the clumps and arranging them around. I also pulled some stray tubers off the daisies that I planted last year and re-distributed them around the bed. I think this summer will be daisy-riffic, to coin a phrase. I'm so curious to see what color the freebie daisies will be! The leaves are a little different than the ones I planted last year.

I've been in a sour mood the past few days because of following some of the political stories that are going on right now, and then when I was working out in the garden, I just was so in the moment, listening to a mockingbird on the neighbor's chimney, looking at the new growth on my established plants, spotting earthworms, cleaning and tidying...it was so enjoyable. Then I came inside and opened the laptop to write this post, and the browser window was open to a news site, and seeing it made that sour feeling poke its head up again. So the solution seems pretty obvious--no more politics! At least not for a while. Spring is too pretty to pollute it with all our human garbage, don't you think?

Tomorrow I'll see if I can get some good pictures of some of the baby leaves and shoots.