Mother's Little Helper

Jenna came home today to see her dad, following his surgery yesterday. She brought us lunch from Dairy Queen. We were both glad to see her, since we don't get to very often. Well, not as often as we'd like. But she does have a life, and a big part of it includes her fiancé, Joe, and he lives in Mishawaka, Indiana. That means they both travel back and forth a lot on the weekends to see each other. They aren't getting married until next May, when Joe hopes to be finished with school.


Jenna has always enjoyed doing yard work. The grass didn't need mowing yet, otherwise Jenna would have gladly done that. Instead, she went around and picked up sticks and branches that had fallen from the trees during a storm that went through here yesterday.

I was pretty busy around the yard, too. I only intended to do some weeding, but found plenty of other little things to do. At day's end, I had:

• spread three wheelbarrow loads of mulch
• weeded all the gardens
• watered most everything
• pruned the roses
• deadheaded the daisies, coreopsis, gaillardia, and geum
• made a list of plants for which I need to make plant markers
• pruned the forsythia and put the cuttings in water to root
• picked the strawberries

It was a gorgeous day - perfect, even. Jenna enjoyed lounging by the pool. It wasn't too hot and while I'd prefer she not lay there and bake like that (see this post), I understand how good it feels to do it.

Romie was up and about, off and on. He's supposed to do some walking, but what he did I would call pacing. He was really restless, wanting to do things in the yard (he enjoys yard work, too), but not being allowed to, nor feeling up to doing much of anything, he paced.

The next couple of weeks are going to go by very slowly for him, I think. It's hard to keep a good man down, but I'm going to try!