May Flowers!

I avoid the garden. I have a black thumb. Really. If I look at a plant wrong, it dies. When I went off to college, my mother gave me a cutting of a plant that she was given a cutting of when she went off to college. That was in the 1950s, and my mom still has this plant. My cutting died the first semester. All I had to do was leave it in water. It didn't like sunlight. I had it on my desk away from the window and kept the vase full. It still died.

So I stay out of the garden, except to take pictures from time to time. But my husband humors me and buys and plants things in the garden that he knows I'll like. Today, he presented me with some black petunias. He loves me. He really does!


Black Petunias by *dbvictoria on deviantART




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The hedge and I

Today, a gorgeous sunny but slightly chilly day, was the perfect day to finally chop our hedge down to size. It's not 100% done, because there's some parts I just can't reach, and even if I could reach them after an hour of wielding the hedge trimmers my arms were screaming for mercy.

Here's what it looked like before:







and after:







I got the sides fairly straight, amazingly considering how much trouble I have drawing a line with a ruler, but the top is a bit raggedy still. I need a ladder, though, to be able to finish the job right. I also need a different tool to assist, as there were a couple of branches too hefty for the trimmers to chop.

I've been making cuddly with my heating pad, moving it back and forth from shoulder to shoulder this evening, and will probably pop a couple of ibuprofen tonight, just in case. It was the lifting and holding the trimmers perpendicular to my body and at head level that was the really tough part.