some cleanup and a gnarly cut

It’s been raining nearly every day since the hurricane so I was told and it has rained just about every day since I’ve been home, not a lot, sometimes just sprinkles some, except yesterday. Jade came in Wednesday to help with the yard and get her dad to change the oil in her car but it was a bit rainy so nothing got done in the yard. Yesterday though was dry and she got up on the roof and cleared it of branches, twigs, leaves and other storm debris. Then she cleared the west side of the front filling the bed of the truck and making a huge pile of the stuff that wouldn’t fit including the stuff from the roof. 

She pulled all the plants in pots out of the barn and the big plumerias out of the garage. After work my grandson Mikey, who has moved back to Wharton, came over with a chainsaw and cut up the fallen trunk of the photinia in front and hauled it over to the burn pile and then cut down the trunk that was leaning drunkenly against the fringe flower tree and cut it up and made a pile of it in the front. We need to torch the burn pile before we add anymore to it and I thought I would do that today but it rained last night and is still overcast and wet. I may still try after breakfast. There was a pile of stuff in the little backyard when I got home from the hospital so I guess Marc did that. 

The front is still littered with small stuff making it hard to walk there and the big backyard hasn’t been touched but Mikey thinks he can take care of most if not all of the large limbs down and still hanging from the two pecan trees with a ladder and a pole saw. It’s also treacherous walking back there with all the downed branches. The back half of the big backyard is fairly clear but still has scattered branches. 

We’ve lost a lot of our summer canopy in the big backyard and it became very apparent last night with the full moon shining unobstructed right in the etched glass windows in my bedroom. Previously it was hidden by the pecan trees.

I missed SHARE last week because I was recovering from the angiogram and missed it yesterday, recovering from the surgery but I saw my neighbor and fellow volunteer as he was coming back from his walk and was glad to learn that we didn’t lose any food. Power was restored to that area first, which is why we were able to eat at the Italian restaurant Monday night, and everything had stayed solidly frozen. Yesterday was busy though with half being large families. The roof of the building took some damage though so they’re getting that repaired.

I walked around the yard and a few things are blooming, the Mexican bird of paradise

the indigofera,

the heritage rose. The orange cosmos are not blooming but I swear they have doubled in height since the hurricane.

I took the bandage off my leg and took a shower yesterday late afternoon. The incision is pretty ugly, a vertical cut right where my leg joins my body where my leg bends to sit so half the incision is on my body and half is on my leg. Sitting or standing is fine, no pain. Transitioning from one to the other hurts but less every day.  Everybody keeps telling me everything can wait and to rest and recover but I’m sick of resting. It feels like that’s all I’ve done for the last six weeks, rest and lay around. But I’m being a good girl, no cleaning up the yard, no yoga until I get the go ahead from the doctor, no housework. Ok, the no housework is not such a burden.