I tried to take it easy today. I had to have the tiniest of minor surgeries today, the kind that shouldn't need stitches, as long as I don't raise my heartbeat enough to overpower a little silver nitrate (in lieu of stitches). After the little disposable piece of me was removed, I came home and let Julia Child collaborate with me to make the best onion soup of all time (do you hear me, younger child of mine? Of All Time), and then took a nap on the couch, so as to be completely still. I'm not sure I accomplished my goal. In fact, I'm pretty sure I failed.
I let a hot, finally-dry day go by while I recovered, and by the time I went outside to water containers, my coleus on the front porch was almost wilted away to nothing. I set to fixing that without further delay. While I sprayed the flowers and hostas around the stump of the Bradford pear, I tried to rip out a few more suckers coming up from the roots of the stump, and managed to be stung either by one of the spikes on the big suckers, or by an insect. I'm not sure which, but now there's a lump under the heel of my hand with a little brown dot in it. I guess it's not worse than the damage I did to the suckers. Then I switched my valves on the faucets to water up front, and by the time I walked from one side of the garage to the other, I was presented with an opportunity for a product review. You know those neon green, expandable, lightweight hoses they sell at Home Depot? I'm not impressed with them. I had zero success making it seal when I attached my sprayer, even after we bought little plastic washers to help out. And today, as I leaned over to pick up the sprayer, the hose hissed and then blew apart, shooting water in my face. I had no time to spare with the coleus, so I picked up the ripped fragment of hose, and wrapped it around my hand until I closed off enough water gushing out of the long split to be able to aim it where I wanted. By the time I dribbled water all around the front, I was as wet as the flower beds, and my shoes squished when I walked. I guess it's time to go to Lowe's and get a replacement.
In my front yard can be found at least two growing things that are not what I expected them to be. A couple weeks ago, when a friend was over, I noticed a spider that was about the span of a walnut in its shell. When I marveled at its size, my friend said it would get much larger. I guess I didn't believe her, because I was really surprised when I caught sight of him this afternoon. He now could touch all the edges of my freakishly large phone, and maybe even hang off the edges. I was not about to get close enough to him to find out for sure. And last month, while I dragged my feet about buying a string trimmer to edge the walk and driveway, I had let a few clusters of suckers grow under the monster crape myrtle, after I noticed that they were developing buds. Today they are in full flower, and when I stopped to take photos this morning, I realized they are significantly lighter in color than the tree they spawned from. They're cute, these tiny, pink blossoms. I wonder whether they would survive long as cut flowers.
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