New Muscles and New Life

The peach blossom, like this one in my south pasture, is one of the most beautiful greetings from springtime.
The peach blossom, like this one in my south pasture, is one of the most beautiful greetings from springtime.

It was cool and dry out today, and I am over my flu-like illness from last week, so I decided to work outside. My work included…

  • Mowing the front yard; the henbit and early grass was higher in patches than the Chihuahuas
  • Digging out the garden in the south pasture, which led to…
  • Firing up the old tiller so I wouldn’t have to dig it all by hand, which led to…

    I found these blossoms on one of my new plum trees. If fruit appears, I will remove it, since it is best not to let a fruit tree bear for the first three years.
    I found these blossoms on one of my new plum trees. If fruit appears, I will remove it, since it is best not to let a fruit tree bear for the first three years.
  • Driving to town to buy a new tiller, since the old one’s primer bulb was broken, and I never liked that tiller anyway.
  • I got the new one assembled and fired up, then tilled the garden for over an hour. The tines kept getting choked with grass.
  • Put the tiller away and hauled all the trash down our 100-yard-long driveway to the curb. It was two weeks worth of trash since I was sick last weekend.
  • Grabbed a camera and photographed some of the young growth on some of our trees, which, despite the subdued light, were very beautiful to me.

All this activity woke up some of my muscles, ones I haven’t used since at least October. I’m a pretty active person, but my mowing muscles, my tilling muscles, and especially my pulling-the-starter-cord muscles, which got extra work trying to revive the dead tiller, become dormant in the winter. It felt really good.

Of course, I need to till again tomorrow, then rake and sift the soil to remove all that grass, but I got an excellent start today.

Henbit fills our yard and pasture for the first weeks of spring, then dies back for the rest of the year.
Henbit fills our yard and pasture for the first weeks of spring, then dies back for the rest of the year.

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