Memorial Day Monday

I always feel sorry for the many who count on this one American May holiday (many other countries give time off on several different occasions during this month), when the weather turns on them and they can't enjoy a beautiful day outside. For me, it hardly matters: moody-skied Monday, somber Sunday -- they come and go and I can't say that I notice if it's a weekend or a weekday because my work is now outside of the office and it stops and rolls forward depending on my own willpower and perseverance, rather than on someone telling me when to do what.

All this to say it was a gloomy gray day -- cool, too, so that unless you were really exerting yourself, a warm jacket was in order.

We really exerted ourselves.

Perhaps the biggest, heftiest, most difficult farmette project is one that has to do with the sprawling and someone inert (in terms of fruit at least) raspberry patch. Half a foot below a dense network of roots there is fabric. We want to pull it up and out, dig up all weeds, chip it and replant the few raspberry canes that could take off afresh.

If we succeed, we'll transform that patch of dense weeds (just ahead of the wheelbarrow in the photo below) into something more manageable.

Fortified with breakfast...





...we proceed.


 



Two hours later we're spent. For the first time ever, I hear the doubt in Ed's voice. I don't know... he mumbles and shakes his head. Tantamount to saying -- this is insane.

And maybe it is insane. I don't always understand why we take on the projects we do. To encourage healthy, lovely plant life, maybe that.



the first of the daylily bloom




False Indigo


Maybe.

In the evening, my older girl and her husband are over. The plan had been to barbeque, but that plan was tossed aside when the wind brought in the rain.






The end of a big holiday weekend. Dusk turns to evening. Barely any light left. I go out again to plant my remaining hostas. Seems fitting for Memorial Day.