This morning's back porch temperature is a perfectly wonderful 65 degrees. Today should be a work outside day. I say "should" because - well, you know what they say about "best laid plans." Sometimes things just don't cooperate.
Take yesterday, for instance.
It started with a text from my bestie that reminded me of a gift she'd given me - a burr for my Dremel. I'd had it over six months and hadn't used it, just hadn't been in the mood. Thinking about the Dremel burr reminded me of another trinket I bought six months ago and hadn't used, a re-chargeable pen-sized carving tool. I dug around in a craft drawer, found the tool, and took it out to the back porch to try it out on a "totem" (walking stick, really, made out of a straight crape myrtle limb) that I started carving last summer. It's been leaning against a corner on the porch all this time. Had a few spider webs and some dust bunnies on it. It depicts characters/things from in my immediate world - birds, flowers and plants, bugs, a leafy vine spiraling around the stick. I'd roughed in most of the images but hadn't fine-tuned them because all of my Dremel bits were a bit too large for detail work. Hence the pen-sized tool. I got it out and tested it. It will work well for details like feathers and antennae, but as I examined the stick, I realized that I hadn't roughed-in the vine all the way down the stick. Removing excess material is a Dremel job. I decided I should finish the vine before starting on the details. Besides, the re-chargeable pen tool was running out of juice. I plugged it into my computer to charge and got out the Dremel stuff, including the new burr.
The last time I used the Dremel on my totem, I made a huge sawdust mess on the back porch, so I decided to do the rough carving outside. My fold-up work table was already set up on the driveway, so I dragged it over to the outdoor electric outlet at the end of the house and went to work. The new burr worked marvelously to remove a lot of material fast. But crape myrtle is very hard wood, and it wasn't long before the Dremel motor started to labor. I laid it down to let it cool for a while, went back to the pen tool until it ran down again, went back to the Dremel.
By this time, it's going on noon, and the shade over my work table was gone. I couldn't move the table back to the shade because the Dremel cord wouldn't reach the outlet without stringing extension cords across the yard, and I was too lazy to do it. I put the Dremel stuff away and returned the totem to its corner.
But while I was outside, I looked around the yard with a critical eye and admitted what a mess it was. Weeds and saplings were taking over the flower beds. Everything in the bed along the driveway was wrapped in cow-itch vine, Virginia creeper, and poison ivy. And I've been meaning to cut down the phlox beds. A couple of weeks ago, I even got out the push-type weed whacker and started toward the first bed, then I noticed that the phlox were positively ALIVE with butterflies and hummingbirds. I didn't have the heart to cut down their food source, so I left the phlox alone. But now that they are going to seed, it's time to cut them down.
I cranked up the weed whacker and started to on the bed by the driveway, but the head was spinning too slowly to do the job. Wouldn't even cut grass, much less tough vine stems. In a previous post, I told you about how The Husband had repaired the whacker's broken clutch bar (or whatever it's called) with a bar salvaged from an old lawnmower. I wondered if that was the problem - maybe the bar wasn't pulling the cable enough. I'd gotten a new bar weeks earlier but hadn't yet put it on, so I put on the new bar. The weed whacker suddenly went from a wimpy, half-hearted piece of junk to a straight-up badass weed-chopping machine. I congratulated myself and went back to work.
As I was working on the last, weed-infested bed, a serious problem arose. I heard a SCHUMPP and a wheeze, and the motor quit, and when I dragged the whacker out of the weeds, there was A TOMATO CAGE, which had been hidden by the weeds, wrapped around the spinner head.
I thought, Well, sh*t, and proceeded to try to untangle the tomato cage. Easier said than done. Evidently, this was a premium tomato cage, for I could not budge the wire, not even with a pry bar. The only solution was to cut it off.
It could not be done - at least, I couldn't do it - with wire cutters. Time for Plan B.
It seemed that the tomato cage might slide right off the shaft if I could remove the spinner thing. There was a bolt on the bottom holding it on. It was a sunken bolt, requiring a socket to turn it. It took 10 minutes to round up a ratchet and the correct socket, and another few minutes to dig enough dirt from around the bolt to enable the socket catch hold of the bolt head. But, guess what? Not only was I not strong enough to budge the bolt, the tomato cage, itself, got in the way; I could not get enough leverage to really bear down on the ratchet.
Back to the cutting idea.
I got the Dremel out again, put on a cutting disc, dragged the lawnmower onto the porch (where I could work in front of a fan), and began cutting. (Did I mention that I am scared to death of that cutting disc?). Sparks flew. There was a time or two when I thought I smelled hair burning, and the whole time I wondered if it was a good idea to be making sparks so close to a gas tank . . . . I soldiered on, and slowly but surely managed to chop off enough of the tomato cage to remove it from the spinner.
Whew!
Lord Jesus, I was worn out by the time the last piece came off.
But, thankfully, the weed whacker cranked up again, and I finished the last bed near the house just as the motor started sputtering, running out of gas (I hope that's the problem). I hadn't yet gotten around to the big phlox beds out in the middle of the yard, but I didn't know if we even had any more gas, and besides that I was tired. I said, Screw it, and put the weed whacker away.
Today, I'm going to tackle the rest of the beds and, if I have enough energy left after hauling away the debris, I'll mow the yard, since it's supposed to rain this weekend. The riding lawnmower and my big yard wagon are both at Nanny's. I'll have to go get them at some point but, first, these phlox are COMING DOWN. TODAY.
I'll start right after I do a Wordle. Or two. ;)
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