Arrrgh!!!

I had a list of chores that needed to be done outside to put the lawns and gardens to bed for this year. Usually I start working on them earlier, but weather and other obligations have kept me from getting to them. Last week, we had a stretch of three days with temps in the sixties. You can bet I made use of that time to trim things back and weed. I pulled spent plants, and got rid of a few unwanted plants.

Today's work was more along the lines of cleanup. I needed Dear Husband's help, but it turned out that he had his own list of projects, so I carried on without him until lunchtime. Then I asked my resident StepSon to give me a hand. I got an early start, and the guys helped me the last hour or so of my time outside. By 2:30 I was MORE than ready to come in.

I tidied up the mulch pile, moving part of it off the grass. (DH moved the pile with the snow plow. I wouldn't call a snow plow a precision tool. Some of the mulch ended up on the grass, which bothered me, but not DH.) I mulched the day lilies in the herb garden, and the sidewalk garden. I mulched the clematis, and put rings around the two roses that are in ground. I raked the north yard, and then mowed part of it. I moved mulch to the southeast corner of the house and set in stepping stones to make a path to the gas meter for the meter reader, and I raked birch leaves out of the junipers.

SS moved compost for me, and covered the peonies, roses and iris with compost. (My iris are trying to grow over each other. Some are completely out of the ground, so we covered them for the winter). He raked up everything that I cut out of the driveway garden last week, and took it to the north end of our lot, and finished the raking I had started on the front lawn.

Dear Husband moved the timbers I wrote about, that looked like pick-up sticks in my herb garden. He set them atop the raised veggie bed so that water would drain off them during the winter. DH caulked the soffit at the living room cathedral window. He had to tear it out earlier this year to remove the bees that had nested, and was just getting around to caulking the replacement. While he was there, he decided to caulk the center panes of the window.

I had forgotten that my favorite painter was visiting this morning to do some touch-ups. Before he left, I asked him how warm it needed to be outside to paint trim. He said that today actually was warm enough, but that it was supposed to be warmer toward the end of the week. You all probably know that it's best to paint between 10 and 2:00 this time of year. Dear Husband and I agreed that we could put off the last of the trim painting until later this week, so the scaffold remains under my living room window. I hope that warmer weather doesn't necessarily mean wet weather or that scaffolding will never be down in time for Elegante Mother's Open House!

Dear Husband and I were running out of steam when it came to the last of the chores. He and SS moved the piles of leaves I'd gathered to the compost pile. I set rigid insulation on the floor of the garage and DH helped me move some of the plants into the garage to be wintered over. Then, I swept off the sidewalk, and fed the birds.

Elegante Mother put a beef roast in the crockpot this morning. I contributed roasted potatoes seasoned with Lipton's dry onion soup mix, and steamed broccoli with white cheese sauce. It was a surpisingly easy meal, and tasted good.

Are you tired, yet? I certainly was. I need a new body. Every time I sit still for a bit something hurts! I spent some time in the office this evening, and I'll need to put in more time tomorrow I have a punch list of things to be done inside tomorrow, but that's another post. *S*