But I Digress

The Silkies were squawking though not panicked, but Bess and I decided to go take a look-see anyway, walking and not running.  The chickens were fine.  I noted a hole burrowed under their fence by some evil-intentioned wild thing.  Like Pa Kettle, I usually grab whatever comes to hand to plug these holes.  First-time company is coming in a couple of weeks and I thought it might be better to do a proper job of it.  There are some good-sized pieces of hog panel behind the feed barn, but I'd need the bolt cutters to trim one.  Going into Steve's section of the barn, I saw that Tree Guy and Sons had used a lot of tools but hadn't put them back.  "As long as I'm here, I'll just tidy this up (ignoring the destruction by the resident, wannabe-decorator ground squirrel)."  Never did find the bolt cutters.  Going to find a piece of firewood big enough to block the hole in lieu of hog panel, I noted that I still hadn't washed the yard tractor.  Plugged the hole in the chicken pen with a log and grabbed the hose to rinse off the tractor.  The hose had sprung a big leak and was sending up spray like Old Faithful.  Naturally I had parked the tractor next to the hose bib and got totally soaked.  Couldn't go back into the house dripping wet, so wandered past the flower garden (sans flowers at the moment) in the front yard.  Oh, crum...look at the weeds!

I'll be honest.  I'd rather spend hours weeding than fifteen minutes dusting.  It's a total bonus when the weeds are as pretty as these, a mix of red clover and blue lupine...and a bunch of other stuff I could easily do without.  That "garden" is a big octagon rimmed with lavender plants, with a rectangle in the center where the daffodils bloom.  I completely weeded the center section, by which time my shirt was dry and I was bent like a crone and the sun was close to the horizon.  Hobbling back to the house for what I considered a well-earned "sundowner," Pearl was waiting just inside the screen door.  She and Frank had been napping when I'd left the house four-plus hours before, and she really let me have it because I'd gone without her.  As I've said, we're supposed to do things together.  I just went out to check on the chickens.