I'm mentally setting up what to do first today out in the garden. My mind began to wander towards this afternoon when tasks move indoors due to the heat and I realized that one of the things that stops me cold is to VISUALIZE in my mind the ENTIRE TASK. I looked up above my computer to where I have posted on a printed 8"x11" paper:
I even (naturally) have it underlined just like it is up on my wall. (I should frame that thing! ) I think I am actually beginning to understand what it means. Each morning BEFORE going out to the garden I decide what is most important to do. In other words, I PRIORITIZE! Today I cleaned the hummingbird feeder and next I'm going to move some tubs that are blocking the path to the front yard and caused DS to take a fall the other day and scrape his calf. Then I'll water (especially the new seeds), and if I'm still able to move, I'll do some snipping of old growth and flowers. Then it will be too hot out there...again. But TODAY will "ONLY" be around 100ºF! "ONLY!!!"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks and then starting on the first one. - Mark Twain
So I need to get moving NOW, but I'll answer you more, coconuts, in a bit.
==================================(Afternoon - inside time)
I got a LOT done today! I moved those 4 heavy pots (HEAVY!!!) to another place temporarily; they're out of the way now. Left behind? A LARGE clump of whippy weeds. They've covered and are in the process of SMOTHERING EVERYTHING in its path! Picture an invasive vine that's been slithering over my neighbor's fence, pretty purple Morning Glory trumpet flowers masking their true and devious nature, and you've pretty much got it. They're all over the full grown fruit trees in a solid blanket to where the trees get no sunshine and eventually die. I keep finding the goat heads that I missed, too, but I'm taking them out as I see them. I'll get them all though! I'm determined.
I also wrestled with the straw bales out there to make some "open tunnels" forming a "T" shaped tunnel for the pups to play in and on, so they get used to the Barn Hunt set up in a comfortable environment. They liked it so far...A LOT!! Next I'm going to take the bale on top and slide it over on top of the open tunnel that I set up this morning so they can get used to going into a tunnel that's open on both ends. They're so curious about everything that this should be right up their alley. I'll take treats out there tomorrow for them so they can begin to relate the straw bales with treats, good things, and happy times.
Spot is apparently thriving, too. I'm sort of glad she is, but managing the pups with Spot is a trick. I can allow ONE of the pups in at a time, but if I let them BOTH in, they pack up and attack poor old Spot. She can take care of herself, but she is sort of old and feeble and skeletal, and it doesn't seem right to have two VERY healthy and robust 6 mo. old puppies packed up against her. So it's going to be one or the other of the pups in with me while Spot is inside. Today I brought the rambunctious, insanely playful, and absolutely adorable Boots inside while I put Spot outside to get some sun. She loves the sun! Mittens was already out there, and alone she gets along with Spot fairly well. So that worked.
This evening I'm going to do a bit more work in the garden since just before dark it will be a nice "cool" 91º out there. I've decided to move a few more pots, this time the empty 30 gallon pots, move some of the big 1 cubic yard of planting soil bags off the futon, mix them with some composted chicken manure and humus in my yard hauler, fill one or two of those 30 gallon pots, and plant my Smooth Criminal squash in one of them while moving some smaller pots over to the dog's yard and dumping their contents into the holes dug by Boots and Mittens. These pots need to be dumped anyways, so why not make good use of the used up soil? It looks like craters out there! Treacherous walking!
I'm also going to plant some more of the Tecoma plants.
I am really liking this free Spanish course I'm taking on my cell phone. It's called Duolingo and like I said, it's FREE. They make it like a game, but have lots of little exercises to do. You may want to give it a try. Like my old friend used to say, "For free take, for buy waste time." I'm on Day 8 now, haven't paid a dime for it, and am remembering a lot from my old high school days. Check your APP store?
Also, sorry to hear about your mom. Well, more sorry to hear about your experience with your mom actually. No child deserves to be treated like that. MD used to tell other people about me, "She's such a nervous child." Hell, she'd be nervous, too, if she was treated like that! SHE made me nervous! Sounds to me like they both must have attended The Svengoolie School of Charm and Torturous Behaviors.
==============================(Tuesday morning)
I just found a Tecoma Hybrid Crimson Flare® Esperanza, a newly created, bright red "trumpet flower" producing plant for my hummers at a local nursery!! I am so tickled about it!! In fact, they have two of them at the nursery! As I look out of my WOW right now, what I see is the RED of my Red Hot Mama salvia, and next to it a first time blooming Tecoma x smithii "Orange Belles" with clusters of bright yellow-orange trumpet flowers, and then my Black and Blue salvia. Above all that is the bright red hummingbird feeder, often fought over by my beloved hummers, hanging on a "shepherd's hook" hanger with wrought iron bunnies "hopping" across the top of it. Oh, and my sweet puppies lounging underneath the bird bath feeder. What a place to relax! I am so lucky!!
I need to block the view of my neighbors, though, and these Tecomas can each reach a height of 8 ft. high and wide, can stand the surface of the sun heat here up against the back fence on a 110ºF day, and are drought resistant (once established). I can get rid of EVERY whippy weed on this property and not hurt my "whippy-weed-purple-blossom-loving" hummers one bit! Instead, I'm offering them an 8'x8' smorgasbord of TRUMPET flowers times THREE plus the hummer feeder and spraying water fountains in red buckets! This isn't set up yet, but will be in the next few days.
I already have the Orange Belles one (I got it last summer) and the nursery has the other two, but in bright red. (Telling you about it, I have convinced myself. Tecomas are rather pricey, $120 each, but so worth it!) Their leaves are EVERGREEN in as mild a winter as we have here, they adore nothing more than to bask in HOT temps., they are fern like in appearance, AND are rapid growers. I'M SOLD!
So a solid 8' wall of loveliness along approx. 24' of my back fence and privacy from the neighbor's 2nd story stare into my backyard, food for the hummers nearly year around, and no pruning necessary to produce blooms. Since I'm planting them each in a 30 gallon container (meaning I can move them around as I please to get the most bang for my buck and the best environment for them, thereby nothing is "in stone" as to their position), they will be that much higher in height, blocking even more view from my neighbor's upstairs windows. What a happy relief!!!
I'M TAKING BACK MY HOME! This is good. It's taking some time, but it IS getting done, albeit slowly. I just made my FIRST appointment with the Disabled Veterans to pick up some of my donations. I forgot what's in the boxes in my car and pickup, but I have until a week from Thursday to count them up, decide if they'll take everything, and add some things, too. Why am I so afraid to part with these things? If I need them sometime in the future, I can easily replace them. (That does sound like MD, though. But where she couldn't STOP "letting go" of things, whether precious to others or not, I need to learn to let go of things and stop the fear involved in doing that.) The way I go on about it, you'd think that I'd had a childhood of extreme poverty and hunger, and so I feel the need to hoard things. That was not the case.
But MD did make things disappear, things that meant a lot to me. I'm beginning to fill her out in my own mind regarding how she handled my abuse. She used a lot of physical abuse, but even more so she used mental torture on me: the songs so sad they'd make me cry and then I was slapped into silence. Leaving me at the church camp with my abuser being one of the ministers. Making my friends, the twins, watch her make my dress so they'd learn how, but saying to them how stupid and ineffectual I was. These dresses, all alike and yellow gingham, were from the money I made all summer selling those gorgeous, ripe beefsteak tomatoes door to door to the neighborhood housewives for 5¢/lb. I made $27.00, a TON of money in those days, and MD took it from me and gave EACH of us $9.00 and insisted we blow it on Playland at the Beach (a now defunct amusement park in San Francisco) and those dumb dresses. The twins became wonderful seamstresses and made all their own school clothes I found out later. I've never even tried to sew anything again. MD was such a dud as a mother.
But now I'm trying to straighten up EVERYTHING, all at once, but this is a BIG job for one person. The other night I heard on TV this saying:
...and it made me cry. I really do feel all alone in this. DS is so busy working, so he just wants to collapse or play some videogames after a 12 hour shift. Understandable. But then where does that leave me? I'm not even sure that I can do it. But I do know that I have to at least try. So one tiny step at a time and try to keep up with what I've already accomplished. And try to keep the faith as well. If I allow this to get me down, I'm sunk!Many hands make light work. - John Heywood
I can't let the turkeys get me down!
Honeybera