The yard looked something like this:
We're near a lovely lake and we've got a sandy soil here (thanks, glaciers!). The only way the place can hold any sense of green are to plant seeds and root stalks that don't mind the conditions which is also while you just keep watering. Its taken quite a while, near 25 years, but I've think the yard has gone as far as it can go. There are home movies of family tossing a baseball around and poofing up sand each time. Now it looks like this:
It can also mean that the family is grown and gone, but I gradually adjusted for the temperature, added stuff where I needed, and the grass began to grow as fewer people were around to see it, except me. When family members passed on, I added a perennial bush in their name. I have run out of space because be cause people just keep dying on me.
The guy next door has a bird feeder all rigged up so that we get birds all year round, especially cardinals and chickadees. I help out with the bird bath. Our area is also home to two chipmunks and a bunny that keep their distance but seem comfortable just hanging around (the chipmunks live under my deck). The nicest days are when the animals are out chirping and singing and calling to each other "Free Food at Dave's!"
Right now, this minute, it is a beautiful morning. In a little while, I'll get outside and continue the yardwork, still trimming, and cutting and preparing.
But what used to take a day or two, even when I was working, now takes a week. My legs are throbbing from doing yesterday's raking, and it took two days to mow the lawn. There are places that need seeding, and just straightening up and the thought of that drains me now. But last week, I came home from writing and saw how the yard needed a good mowing (and the neighbors had done theirs, of course) so I got it done. I've told me wife that I can still work the yard, just at my own pace now which I can really see it as slowing down.
So now it looks more like this:
There are some places grass will grow, and some places it won't. I no longer care. I will shape it up the best I can, with help from my wife, and then I'll get the lemonade and a good book, and sit on the deck. The bunny will stop by later on and see what I'm doing in his garden.
New York has ice and snow, rainy springs, and humid summers. But every now and then you get these magnificent days in May, June, and September. Those few weeks are worth all the others, and amkes me glad I live here.
Sometime the MS will stop the gardening totally, and I'll get someone else to do it, or not bother and move along. I ask this guy, sometimes:
As I clean up his area "How am I doing?" He just keeps on with his quiet smile. And so do I, because I got up this morning to a wonderful day. I might mow the lawn, next week.
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