A DROP IN A BUCKET

A DROP IN A BUCKET

First let me say thank you for all the emails asking if I am OK… I am, sort of… at least I am walking again, mostly withOUT the cane at the moment. I even got on the tractor yesterday and rode around the place grinding up the leaves that have been driving me nuts for the last month. I managed to fill all the bird feeders a couple of days ago, and I thought of Rachael who said she would do them for me if she only lived closer. I am sure she would have, too. Some people are so sweet!
I don’t know what its like where you are, but it was one beautiful day here! I turned off my “heating” system (LOL!) in my greenhouse so I don’t cook my geraniums or impatiens. Euwww. See them? They are still blooming! Oh, that is a drop light in a bucket – my heating system – sitting on a few bricks. It is plugged into one of those outdoor Christmas timers, generally set on dusk to dawn, that keeps things toasty in there on the cold nights. Actually, last week when it went down into the teens (YES! IT DID!) I left the light on 24 hours a day. The coldest corner of the greenhouse was 45 degrees. Not bad for a bunch of bricks, a 60 watt bulb and a 10 gallon bucket is it? This is one of my brighter ideas. Sorry.
Monday it hit 72 degrees. January 7th! The peepers are peeping, the buds are coming out on things. Even the daffodils are coming up. I celebrated being able to walk by taking the leaf blower out to clean up the carport and also blew some of the leaves away next to the carport, and there they were! Daffodils coming up! The daffodils have been up out front by the cactus for a couple of weeks. They are the real old variety of long skinny leaves and tiny yellow flowers – super fragrant!
My plan (if I am still walking tomorrow) is to move these digitalis from in front of this shed to the front yard. I had to put this old lawn chair out there so no one would walk on them since they are right in front of the door. Needless to say, I did not put the seeds there. I guess God must have dropped some seeds and not noticed while on the way to a better place. Or maybe He was just testing me to see if I knew what they were before I ran the John Deere over them. About 6 feet away from the corner of that shed, a big branch came down during the 50 mph winds we had last week. It has a diameter of about 7 inches, and hit the ground with so much force I cannot get it out. I am waiting for my neighbor to find a minute and bring his chain saw over and cut it up so I can get it out of here. Can you imagine if it had hit the roof of the shed?????
The hardest part is pacing myself. I am so excited to be able to be outdoors and walking, I want to do everything NOW! But then, things happen to slow me down. For some reason today I noticed a couple of birds flying high up over the house, riding the wind currents, just “laying on the air” as my old auntie used to say. Being out in the country, we have a lot of buzzards, so I almost didn’t pay them any mind – but something was different. So, I stopped working and sat there and looked and watched. They cruised a bit closer. That buzzard’s head was white! Well, what do you know? A pair of bald eagles! I hope they come back to nest out here. We had a nesting pair back before we had to have our pine trees cut down because of pine bark beetle. I got the men to leave the tree they were nesting in, but after the other trees were cut down the eagle tree blew over. Anyway, I was excited to see them!
All in all it has been an exciting day. I was able to do some yard work, I heard the peepers, I mowed the leaves out front, I saw 2 eagles, and my tickets came today to go to study with the Dalai Lama this summer! Life is good.