Box #2 Pencils, Staplers and Floppy Disks

Box #2...trash, thrash, all trash.  Keeping a few handy screw drivers, a couple key rings...really shouldn't bother with those...a couple pieces of broken things, who knows they might still be fixable with super glue.  It's the convergence of time, glue and pieces that's hard to come by. Keeping a small tin full of girls school pictures. And for the throwing away, if software comes on a floppy disk it's not worth even thinking about.  That made this an easy box.  I paused for a minute thinking about whether to throw away the hinged box that the disks were stored in, but I'm in the mood so off to recycling it went.  Then there was a index card box with alpha dividers.  I saved all my old drivers licenses, membership cards in historical societies, hospital patient ID cards...everybody wants to put a piece of plastic in your wallet.  Times have changed a lot in ten years.  And then there were the address pages from my 1999 Franklin Planner.  I read through all the names...many, most of people that I knew through work.  Strange to see how people who were once important enough to get a note in my address list have been forgotten so completely.  Makes me wonder about my present day work relationships...which seem important now.  Wonder what I can do differently to be sure that while they are in my life that I mindful of how short our time together will be. Every minute is of consequence.  And the rest of this STUFF...it is not of consequence.  Thanks Laurel, on to box three tomorrow.

On Another Note...My Indoor Garden

So I've decided to expand my blog topic...moving from outdoors landscape to indoors landscape.  I guess anyone who follows me will appreciate that in this life in KVille it's either one or the other.  And today, I took the first step to beating back the indoor jungle.  I emptied box one...in my goal to empty one box a day until I reach ground zero.  I may not be able to change everything, but there's no excuse for not changing what I can.  Laurel is my mentor.  She's holding me to my promise.  And maybe just maybe I can be the change that I want to see.

Box One...was file folders...from some long forgotten file cabinet, boxed for ten years without opening...like most of the boxes around here, untouched since we moved in.  I saved a bit, shredded a lot and trashed the rest.  Found my bachelor's degree, my marriage license, some old family photo negatives and a file of Christmas letters written back in the 80s.  Oh and my shot record...you know the one your mom keeps from when you were a baby..sentimental value.  That all got saved...well maybe I will pitch that shot record tomorrow.  What got trashed.: a folder full of product information from children's toys, a folder full of letters of reference and personnel evaluations from 30 years ago...really relevant stuff, my MSU transcripts the good the bad and the embarrassing.  Information about the cost of my dad's funeral...1996...Dad's been gone 15 years this September.  Guess I don't need to know the cost of his casket.  

Stay tuned, and just so you know...I really respond to applause!!

Expanding the West

So...there's been a bit of a gap here, sorry bout that friends.  Not in gardening...just in blogging.  But today and yesterday there was progress.  Thanks to Sister Karen.  Fourth of July there was a bit of extreme landscaping she helped with...we knocked down the overgrowth of the windmill.  Last year it was Laurel who did the job all by herself.  It's a miserable task and really we need a plan so that we don't have to do it again...something involving Round-up I suppose. This year..Karen and I did the cutting and Greg ran the refuse through the grinder.  Bunches of bug bites we got for our efforts and a few insults from a broody hen who had a clutch hidden deep in the overgrowth.  The rooster gave Greg some heat when he chased the hen off her nest.  Karen carefully transplanted the eggs to the laying box in the coop....alas...the transplant wasn't successful...the hen took the opportunity to return to the roost and quit the clutch.  .

And today...I pushed out the west edge of the north-south bed and planted two hydrangeas.  Hoping there will be adequate sun there for them.  I have four more buckets to add tomorrow...of spirea, and thinking about adding ferns around those plants.  I saw some big buckets of ferns marked down to five bucks.  No zone information though.

Hollyhocks are in bloom,  although there aren't so many of them.  They must be tasty to deer.  But without the fence around them the chickens have managed to knock out the Japanese beetles who ate them up last year.  Speaking of predators, Greg spotted a family of five mink in the ditch the day after one of our hens went missing.

And remembering my dedication for this blog to Lei and Karen...just to let you know I've been keeping up with the mowing too.  Sigh...miss you Lei.. and Karen hope that you are starting to poke around in that greenhouse.  Love, Log