early spring yard work

The bad weather seems to have worked it's way out while we were in Florida; it's gorgeous now. Yesterday the front porch thermometer read 78. Saturday th'Mr had picked up some of the limbs that fell during the winter, yesterday while he was to the store for coffee I tossed those on the burn pile and lit it. That naturally progressed to me burning other scrap wood laying around, then trimming the multiflora in the backyard, then moving on, to the two rose bushes out front, the bigger of the two holly trees, and just general cleaning along the fence line. th'Mr pulled a big dead limb off one of the apple trees, sawed it up and hauled it to the burnpile.



While I was trimming the 2nd rosebush (pictured here, rosebush center, forsythia on left), the one by the front fence, a garter snake dropped from the sky and gave me a start! A weed tree of some sort had been growing through the rose, and when I lopped it off low and began pulling it down out of the bush, the snake was suddenly there, so I guess it didn't really fall out of the sky, but had been up in the tree (which was maybe two yards tall) above me the whole time I'd been trimming the rose. It was about two foot long, dark and pale stripes running long-wise.



I'm not sure what time I started working outside, but it was dusk when I stopped and my hands, wrists, legs & back were sore the rest of the evening. This morning I soaked a while in the tub, holding first one hand then the other under water while I read a book, so the skin of my hands feel better now, but the tendons --especially in my right hand-- are almost too sore to type.

I should probably go work on the fence line some more today, tomorrow's supposed to rain.