I intended to be a slacker yesterday, but The Husband woke up with ants in his pants, and we ended up working, inside the house and outside, all day long.
After breakfast, I brought my mandolin out to the back porch to practice. I'd barely tuned it up when I saw The Husband coming out of the shed, carrying some boards. He said he was about to re-assemble the bed we'd taken down in a spare bedroom when The Granddaughters moved in back in September. I laid the mandolin aside and went to help him, for assembling that canopy is a two-person job. Once we'd put the room back together, I came back out to the porch and picked up the mandolin again.
A few minutes later, The Husband came out and cranked up the 4-wheeler. He'd seen that a tree had fallen in the soybean field behind the house and wanted to make sure it wouldn't be in the way of the combine. While he was gone, I had a few minutes to practice, but he came back home fairly quickly, went back to the shed, and dragged out a wooden pallet that I've saved for some yet-to-be-determined project. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was trying to rig up something to drag behind the 4-wheeler to gather up the pine needles that have blanketed a long section of Nanny's driveway.
Two big pine trees stand alongside Nanny's driveway, and they shed loads of needles and pinecones in the gravel driveway and in the yard. It drives Nanny crazy, and every year she gets out there with a rake and black plastic lawn bags. It takes her days to rake it all up. Personally, I'd leave them and let Mother Nature deal with them, but Nanny is determined, and is no longer physically up to the task. So I put the mandolin aside and went to help.
We have a leaf sweeper. It is a non-motorized thing, intended to be pulled behind a lawnmower. I suggested that we try the leaf sweeper instead of the pallet. We attached it to the 4-wheeler, but it didn't work; the pine needles in the driveway have been compacted by traffic, and the leaf sweeper wouldn't pick them up, even if I loosened them with a rake. We ended up raking the pine needles into piles and manually stuffing them into the hopper on the leaf sweeper. During this exercise, The Husband said he believed it would be easier to rake them into the bucket on the tractor (any excuse to drive the tractor, you know). So he cranked up the tractor and drove it down the driveway. Nanny and I raked the needles into the bucket, and while The Husband carted them away, we raked up another pile and manually stuffed them into the leaf sweeper hopper. Altogether, between the tractor and the leaf sweeper, we carted off about 10 loads of pine needles, which we dumped onto the low spot in the vegetable garden.
I don't know for sure that it wasn't a mistake to dump them on the garden. I've read that it will make the soil too acidic, and I've also read that it won't affect the pH level by much. In any case, they're there now, laying on top of the soil.
The tractor still had the bush-hog attached to it, so The Husband mowed the garden, except for where the cabbages, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and turnip greens are growing. I am excited to report that all of those things are growing well. Nanny intends to use one of the broccoli heads to make a broccoli salad for Thanksgiving. I don't know what we'll do with all that cabbage! Give some of it away, I reckon.
Both Nanny and I had ordered groceries to be picked up, mine between 2 and 3, and Nanny's between 3 and 4. We timed it so that we got to the grocery store at 3, and picked up both of our orders at the same time.
The Husband was running the leaf blower in our yard when we got back from the grocery store. I kind of hated that he did that, for now we have less of a chance of hearing the armadillo shuffling through the leaves at night. (I am determined to "off" that sucker, for he is digging up our yard something fierce.)
I puttered around the yard a little bit, noticing that the hardy hibiscus plant that The Husband gave me for Mother's Day this year was loaded with seed pods. Some of them were empty, so I know that there are seeds under the thick leaves in the flower bed. I pinched off the remaining dry pods and emptied them into a bag, and will try to sprout them indoors come January.
It was starting to get dark by this time, and my stomach was growling, for we hadn't stopped for lunch. I'd been craving a hamburger for two weeks, and our oldest granddaughter is now working as the hostess as a local hamburger joint, so we called in an order and went to get it. I told The Husband, "Take some cash so that we can tip the hostess." It was kind of heart-breaking, and also kind of cool, to see her working to make money for Christmas gifts. She's a really cool kid.
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