puttering in the yard, arting in the house

We had a couple of nights cold enough for the second quilt and the days were mild, clear, and low humidity. I puttered around in the yard Friday and Saturday; cut back the banana trees and some other stuff I had neglected, watered everything in the ground and in pots, separated one pot of the nuns orchid into five small pots, repotted into bigger pots my pink and yellow angel trumpets, repotted another pink angel trumpet that had two rooted cuttings into separate pots. Every winter before the first predicted freeze I dig up volunteers or take cuttings to root of things that might not return even protected. So far they always have so this year I have three morning glory bush, three coral porterweed, two confederate rose, two pink angel trumpet, three firespike (which I may keep and put in the ground), and the five nuns orchid (because I don’t need three pots of that) 

to donate to the garden club plant sale even though I am no longer a member. I’ll take all that over to a member’s house at the end of April. I also started to tackle the big table in the garage that has been the catchall for tools and things that need to be dealt with but ignored for years. Next post.

Today, Sunday, is overcast and windy, 20mph sustained, 40mph gusts, clearing later with a 40˚ drop in temperature accompanied by a thunderstorm. Tomorrow night supposed to get near freezing. The only thing I’ve accomplished outside today is to drag all the cut back banana stuff to the back edge of the property and deal with the big widowmaker that has hung in the red oak by the driveway just behind where we park the car for nearly two years, a gift from the hurricane in 2024. I was in the barn when it came crashing down today. It would have done some serious damage to anyone unlucky enough to have been standing under it when it fell. That long piece had a diameter of about 5"- 6" which I had to cut in half to be able to lift into the truck and even those were almost too heavy. It’s all in the truck now. 

The rest of the day was indoor stuff, started another bookmark (not shown below), read some in the book I checked out Saturday, Joe Hill’s new novel King Sorrow. I must be fucking insane as it’s 866 pages and lately it takes me a month or longer to get through a book half that length.

I have three new bookmarks, two of which are no great shakes. One was just something quick to test several clear acrylic spray sealers to see how they affected the paint/paper which was mostly not at all and couldn’t really see any difference between gloss (top third) and flat (middle third) but satin (on the bottom third seems to have yellowed it a bit). I chose flat to seal them since I didn’t want to laminate them. The other is a John Lennon quote (attribution on the back) which I cut short because I didn’t like what I did at the bottom. 

Monday today, the new front blew in last night but no thunderstorm. I had my bedroom window open and listened to the long whooshing gusts of wind accompanied by the wind chimes during my wakeful period. Hadn’t put the second quilt away yet so it was in use. It’s in the 40s today so I had to dig out my winter clothes that I had so foolishly put away before April. I won’t be working outside today so I’ll work on the bookmarks and try to make some headway on those 866 pages.