I’ve been making some rash promises lately on the blog, and now I’m trying to come through on them. First of all, I sort of mentioned that I was going to post some pictures of the labyrinth taken in the summer. So, forthwith, I present several pictures I took over the last couple years of the labyrinth during its full summer glory. It is full of wildflowers and I am about 65% finished outlining the whole pattern with daffodils planted every three feet. I have been transplanting bulbs from my main gardens out here for at least five years, using this project as a way to utilize all the bulbs that have to be split as they propagate.
The last was taken right after we burned it off last winter. This is supposed to help keep the fescue in line and encourage the wild flowers. It is also about the only way we have that efficiently beats back the tall grass clumps that have formed around the rocks. We could weed eat the thing, but bear in mind that at 84 feet in diameter, walking the twelve circles into the center means you have walked 1/3 of a mile, 2/3 round trip which is just over a kilometer. That’s a lot of weed eating.
The aerial view was taken by the lineman of our local electrical cooperative when they were here replacing our power drop pole and giving us a new transformer and a new meter. They had a big boom truck with a cherry picker and I induced the workman to take my camera up and get some overall shots of the labyrinth when they had finished their job. I thought it was very nice of them.
Someone else expressed interest in my healing journey, so I thought I’d give an update on that. I’m in pretty good shape now that the hole in my knee has healed as well as the pulled muscle in my thigh, both injuries I sustained during the snowy spell two weeks ago. My sciatic nerve has finally quit complaining about all that, thank heavens.
I am always telling my clients that they must do self care, stretch and take hot baths and do self massage and stuff like that. I have always maintained that if you do those things you can minimize injuries and help the ones you do sustain heal faster. I was about to lose faith in that position while I was dealing with the sciatic thing, but it finally gave in and has started behaving again. Right now I am struggling with my left shoulder, which I stressed out by playing too much Scott Joplin too soon and sort of yanked my shoulder girdle grabbing for the bass. That has finally started to yield to the stretching and other self care, but that too was a real pain in the neck until it finally knuckled under. At least I know I’m not blowing smoke when I tell my clients to stretch, stretch, stretch.
Part of my healing path has been to play the piano more and in order to facilitate that we moved the piano out of the ice box back bedroom and into the master bedroom which is generally warmer because it is in a straight line back from the heating stove. Additionally, I have been playing with paper on a regular basis, which means my desk looks like this:
Here’s one of the cards I recently did.
There are several more, each just as much fun as this one. Oh, okay. I’ll share a couple more.
I have a big collage running around in my mind that I intend to start working on tomorrow, now that I finally got around to doing some of the coloring pages that Tammy Vitale sent me when I signed up over at her blog to get them. That has been a lot of fun. I did one in crayon, one in colored pencil. I thought they came out rather well, and I had a real blast coloring them. You could get something to color too if you wanted to, just go on over to Tammy’s place and click on “Delight Me.”
That is what I have been doing while it was snowy, rather than playing in my garden. I have managed to get out and take Ruby for a walk almost every day, and that was a lot of fun because I got to see the animal tracks from the wild denizens of the park where we walk laid out in front of me. I was very intrigued by this set of prints, which were left by a pair of raccoons who were out walking the path together.
This is where they came out of the woods, and you can see where a squirrel went off to the left as they headed right.
Out in the section of the path that runs through the woods I found a spot where a bob cat was out investigating the mouse situation, and I found it quite amusing that it very carefully walked in the footprints I had made the day before whenever it could. Ruby’s footprints are in the shot also.
The sun was doing neat stuff behind the clouds that day.
As far as other parts of my healing journey, I find that I am not very motivated to watch my caloric intake right now. I managed to lose all the weight I gained during the Cookie Season, which was only three pounds. But Jim got a new cookbook which he has been sampling, and I have been regaled with wonderful enchiladas and some sort of rice/sausage casserole with chicken and peas, plus of course there is always fresh bread around the place.
I’m not too worried, I have only gained a couple of pounds so now I am at 162 again. Still. That trend needs to quit. When it warms up and I start my next big project then I imagine that I will drop weight again. I have determined to get the damned bermuda grass out of my flower beds out on the root cellar mound. Last October I had Jesse pull the rocks out of the lower terraces so I could weed out the grass roots. It looks like this:
You really can’t see the scope of the job from this shot, I have avoided taking pictures because really it is so ugly right now with the rocks torn out etc. It hasn’t been screaming “I’m so photogenic, take my picture Mom” at me much. However, in furtherance of making an interesting and instructive post later on, I suppose I should really document what I have goingon out there right now.
Mañana. Now, it is my bedtime.
