My Mom is Here!!

Which means that we are getting oh so very many things done. I, in usual me fashion, have tackled 4 or 5 projects that I wouldn’t get done otherwise simultaneously and so haven’t finished one yet. Or at least not enough to report on. So. LOTS going on, but not much to show for it (yet).

But some of the stuff we’ve been up to has had to do with the changing of the seasons - the dogwoods were just peaking when my mother got here Saturday night, and so we went around both future house sites and marked them off so they don’t get chainsawed. You’d think that the distinctive shape of the tree would give it away when it’s NOT in bloom, but our poor property has been neglected for 50 years (at least!) and the trees are waaay too close together. And they’ve turned…leggy. I have dogwoods that are a good 20 or 30 ft tall, and only about 4” in diameter, with no branches until the very top. And while they always have an upturned shape, so do all my other similar looking hardwoods. It WAS a nice excuse to walk around the property and check in on things – and talk about what we’re going to do (MUST DO for this year: clear an access path for the pond).

We also walked back to the camper along the edge of the lake – they’re doing work on the dam and have lowered the water level a fair amount, so there’s actually a beach to walk on. You’re not really allowed to (as it belongs to the city and the lake is a reservoir with no direct access from any of the lakefront properties and no swimming…), but we did anyway. We have water oaks and a weird azalea and may apples galore – very cool. I realized that the few times I visited this property as a child it was so overgrown we never got in past the gate, and I don’t remember ever walking around on it. When we came out to assess whether or not I would move here, it was in February and this is the first time I’ve been out on the lake in spring!

And I put away the grow lights today, and reclaimed the picnic table the seedlings were started on for under the awning of the camper. So now I can sit outside and stare at the trees while I type away on my laptop instead of the inside walls of crowded Melvin. Meanwhile my mother is attacking the blueberries and getting all the dead undergrowth out from under our (leggy) blueberry patch that my great-grandfather started. Very exciting! 

Doesn't it just LOOK like the weather's warming up?

Doesn't it, though?

And....spring!