cleaning up

Well, I did get out there yesterday after all. While it was colder, only got up to 60 for an hour or so, it was sunny and I dressed warmly and after a while I shed my sweatshirt. I had a tremendous pile of dead stalks that I had broken down to about 6' lengths that had to be loaded up. They were all easily 12' – 15' tall with a few even reaching 20'. Suffice to say that that stack completely filled, and then some, the back of the truck. It's all over on the burn pile now. 

Then I nearly filled the back of the truck again with the debris from digging up the hay grasses and the red salvia which is still sitting over here waiting to be driven across the street. I also added the two boxes of pecans left over from 2013 and 2014. And two large buckets of seed pods from the magnolia tree because walking on them barefoot is no fun so I pick them up. Then I loaded up all the pecans I had gathered sans one box and took them to down the pecan place and sold them. 80¢ a pound for the small natives and 50¢ a bound for the large ones. I pocketed about $47. Not a big crop but better than last year when we didn't get a single one. Then I gave an enormous fire ant bed that had built up around the base of the banana trees the soap and orange oil water treatment and then I had to clear the hose from the new pump, installed earlier in the week, in the water lily pond to the filter. I was going to work outside today as well since it's warmer but it is also overcast and drizzly and everything is wet.

I ought to be thinking about and starting on new pieces for the show in February, like maybe an angel trumpet, since I sold the three mid-range pieces I had at the Open House but I'm not doing that. After the summer and fall working on that A&M job, which dominated the landscape around here, and then getting ready for the open houses, casting an eye around has revealed that the homestead, not to mention the shop, inside and out, is pretty much a wreck. And I haven't even unpacked from the shows yet. Unpacked the car, yes, but not the boxes or put anything away. So, I'm working on straightening up my work room here in the house, which getting rid of all those pecans was part of, throwing away no longer needed materials for the A&M job, clearing off horizontal surfaces, putting accumulated drawings into tubes for storage, doing a final determination on some lingering things from our move (yes, that was years ago), taking the accumulating donation to the Crises Center...you get the picture.  

It remains to be seen if I run out of steam before it gets to the actual cleaning part.