This morning, I was going to do yard work (not something I often do) which was trimming shrubs and mowing the lawn. I started out well, trimming the shrubs with my electric trimmer. Only nearly cut off my fingers once when I happened to wave to Leo who was sitting in a bedroom window and watching me. As I made my way around to the back of the house, I found one of my shrubs had been invaded with a weed-tree (it’s a tree of some sort, but I don’t want it there, so it must therefore be a weed). That required getting out my saw.
Heck, while I had my saw out, I thought, I should get rid of those weed-trees between my place and the neighbors (the neighbors who aren’t my parents, that is). So I sawed and sawed and moved branches out and sawed some more. Then I thought “that damn Lilac bush is in the way of my clothes line” and decided to start hacking away at it. From my neighbors who *are* my parents, I borrowed a really nice set of shears (great use of the lever in these shears) to cut the branches 1 1/2″ and less in diameter. But the really thick lilac branches were too thick for the shears and would take too long with the saw. “An ax!” I thought. So I went down into dad’s basement and found his ax. And for the first time in my life, I used an ax to cut wood. I felt so independent!
(In a phonecall with my sister, she was aghast to discover that I did this with only Leo around to dial 9-1-1 in case anything had happened to me. And as Leo was back inside the house at the time, even he would have been unable to help. The folks, BTW, are in Pennsylvania this weekend at a Connecting Families weekend.)
As I hinted at in the parenthetical thought above, Leo got to spend some time outside today. I put him on his leash and draped it through the hose and he spent half an hour or so sunning himself and investigating the steps. He eventually got himself loose and lay in the shade, so I figured he was ready to go back inside. He put up no fuss as I took him back inside and he spent most of the rest of the time watching me from the kitchen.
Anyway, by the time I’d hacked away about 1/3 of the lilac bush (but still not enough to get my clothes line through) I was exhausted and it was after 1pm. I picked up and returned all of the tools to their respective places – and damn, just remembered that I left the folks garage open. I’ll go close it after I finish this LJ. Then I took a bath, put on some clothes (shorts – woohoo! sandals – woohoo!) and went off for Chinese Buffet. I’ll clean up the branches and mow the lawn tomorrow, I guess.
After lunch was shopping and after shopping was home again. I made Bailey’s Irish Cream Ice Cream with my ice cream machine – thanks to elsaf for both the ice cream machine and the wonderful recipe. If you have an ice cream machine, give this recipe a try!
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup Bailey’s Irish Cream
Beat the eggs a bit before adding them to the rest to make sure they
break up completely.
Freeze in your ice cream machine.
Good stuff! I just had some (though still runny – it’ll be solid tomorrow.) Anyhoo, time to go and shut the ‘rents garage!