Day in the yard

Despite a lingering cough which -- due to all the cancer circling around me (my cousin Martin, Kevin's mom, Neah Jo's boy...) -- I was momentarily inclined to put down to incipient lung cancer, I heeded the prediction of rain for tomorrow, manned up, and headed out into the yard. Where I did a lot of stuff.

Got the leaves off the roof, the season's second tranche, a big one. Looking up at the trees above I see I'll need to go back up there one more time, but there shouldn't be too much work next time. While I was up there a jackass a couple of houses up was making a bunch of noise with his gas-powered blower, which promised to mess with the equanimity of my day, but eventually did not, as he turned the thing off soon thereafter.

After that I took care of the patio and the deck, then ventured out into the back yard, where I did a lot. While there I generated and stacked a lot of kindling, and realized that I really needed to get Mary's gardening stuff out of the porch so I could put wood there, so I got onto that (after spending 15 minutes or so in the biggest of the leaf piles checking out the sky). But when I got the stuff to the basement I realized that the place was an unholy mess, so I straightened it up, and in the course of so doing took a bunch of stuff out of there to the trash and recycling. And I carried the fireplace stuff up and stuck it on the porch. Then I moved wood from the wood pile, and kindling from one of the two backyard kindling stashes.

Then I noticed Natalie had left in the Subaru, so I raked up the driveway. Naturally, spending that much time in the yard, I talked to a bunch of neighbors, and had a lovely visit from Scott and Olga's golden retriever Phoebe, one of my very best friends.

After about 5 hours in the yard, walking up and down the hill a bunch, my calves are tired as hell. It is about time to head to my mom's to eat leftovers. All told, not bad.