We finally decided on the lights for the outside of the house. Bigger ones for the garage doors and smaller ones for the man doors. These are made by Westinghouse. They're very lightweight but seem well made. The photo is the larger one, the smaller ones are 3" smaller in diameter. These are just under 15"
Though we had many days in the 70s, 80s, and even 90 this month, towards the end temperatures plummeted into the 50s for highs and 30s for lows. Though my weather service never mentioned frost warnings and certainly no freeze warnings, I assumed frosts might happen and covered my tomatoes. That worked the first night, but the 2nd night dropped to 33 at the farmhouse and obviously dropped below freezing at the Palace. My tomatoes did not survive. Today I replaced them. Fortunately, I hadn't planted all of them outside.
Well, barring the pain, my birthday actually got better as the day went on. Spent time with my dogs, letting them chase me around the property on the golf cart. Ziggy running flat out looking extremely happy was a joy to behold. Wish I could have taken photos.
Hal and I, one of his brother's and our friend John went to dinner at Rosa's. I had the shrimp pasta and chicken corn chowder. There was 3 cheese bread with baked garlic an alfredo sauce for dipping as an appetizer. For dessert Hal and I split their almond cream cake.
They were very busy, haven't seen a crowd like that or heard crowd noise since 2019. It was kind of awesome though we could barely hear each other speak!
When we returned to the farm we had a campfire with the dogs, Kaylee, Ziggy and Seamus and drank some whiskey. The pups had a ton of mini milk bones and then a pigs ear each though Seamus didn't seem to know what to do with it, Ziggy consumed his, and Kaylee played with hers for a good hour, throwing it in the air and carrying it around before finally eating it. Good times.
Apparently planting those tree 2 days ago wrecked my left leg from the knee down. I can barely walk on it. As I planted more than 370 earlier in the month I must assume it had to do with the ridiculously hard clay I planted those last 6 spruces into though I don't remember feeling anything wonky at the time. Yesterday I took a flexeril, the muscle relaxant for my back pain, it didn't help much, today I'm just trying acetaminophen. I can't take ibuprofen or naproxen so I'm just stuck with pain killers. I have no idea if I'll be able to plant anything today, I can barely walk.
Happy birthday to me.
My trees I ordered from the Arbor Day Foundation arrived the other day and I planted the tulip trees and about 11 of the Black Hills spruce today. Tomorrow I hope to plant the remaining spruces as well as the free red maple and the American hazelnut I bought. I really have no idea where to put the rest, but I'll think of something. Six of the spruces went along the north side of the pole barn today, The soil was concrete-like clay, I couldn't even get the shovel in one shovel depth, I hope they survive. I was not impressed with the trees at all. The majority of tulip trees were missing most of their rootlets and fully half of the 50 spruce have brown, dead needles and no signs of growth. the ones that did have growth were pale yellow as though they'd been in the dark for a month. I don't hold out much hope for these. Time will tell.
We've been busy. Mostly I've been planting seedlings while Hal works on the electrical. I've planted over 370 trees and bushes. The last 100 tree seedling arrived yesterday. I won't plant those for a couple more days (I have to figure out where to put the 50 spruce) as it's been in the 80s for the most part and that is too hot to do a lot of digging. Spring sort of went straight into summer though by the end of the week we'll be having early April weather with highs in the low 50s. And we've had no rain to speak of so the seedlings are in danger of dying. Weather has been a little wonky.
I've also managed to do a lot of weeding in the perennial bed and managed to plant the sadly dried out roots I bought at Walmart. Some of them have still sprouted, a few aquilegia and one each of the 2 clematis and 2 yellow hollyhocks, but it just took me too long to prepare the bed for them.
As I said Hal has been moving right along on the electrical, most of the boxes are in and he's pulling wire. He even lit up a few of the recessed cans so we can have light when necessary.
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| This is the dining room wall |
On our day off from building yesterday, I got more weeding done in the perennial bed. I was lucky the rain held off as long as it did, giving me hours of cloudy, breezy time. It finally looks like I'm making some headway. The dogs didn't even seem bored this time, instead they wandered about the area checking things out. I even got it cleaned up enough to planted 2 creeping phlox that I bought a few days ago.
