Back At It

Today was a balmy, ninety-something cloudless Tucson morning, with a high breeze that didn't do much to cool things off, but which moved the air just enough.  TBG was able to drive himself to PT.  For the first time in weeks I was alone in my house.  

No one would notice what I was doing.  I could read.  I could turn the volume on the music up way too loud.  I could play Candy Crush Soda.

I chose to garden.

Yesterday, my clippers and I went to work on the dead edges of the hanging basket and the big containers.  I was ruthless.  I ripped out and cut back and removed.  I reorganized and replanted.  

The garden center's newsletter told me to give my roses a haircut, so I did.  LiLou, our grand-pig, did a fine job of trimming their branches on her last visit; there wasn't much left for me to do.  

I watered in the changes before going inside to be sure TBG wasn't writhing in agony.   

But today I had no one to care for.  I cranked up the music (the neighbors weren't home) and dug a trench (for the fertilizer) around the drip line of the Meyer lemon tree  Walking with the hose, bending, digging, spraying myself and not minding at all I soaked the tree and the roses surrounding it, not stopping until

there was a lovely puddle waiting to be absorbed.  Yesterday's deep watering had loosened up the soil; it was very receptive this morning.  I watched the water, the bubbles and the currents and the flow.  The dragon fly came back; we spent some time reminiscing.  

In the front, I filled the passive irrigation buckets around Tree, then carried the 25 pound bag of fertilizer from the UV to all those wet places, which I wet again before adding the right amount of nutrients and wetting each one for the last time.  

In the front yard, the not-that-much-lighter bag of fertilizer and I fed Tree.  I washed cochineal scale off the prickly pear cacti.  I spent some time pondering the advisability of another oleander, a fast growing though somewhat thirsty hedge that could fill the space left when the desert willow keeled over and turned brown.

I found a way to store the rest of the fertilizer and hoisted it up to the top shelf, because Queen T organized the potting shed and that's where the fertilizers go.  I took a final tour, planning my next projects.  

It's been wonderful to spend two days doing what I love for as long as I want without my body deciding that we were finished.  I love my new hip.  Yay Science!!!