Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
OK, world, here I come! Dressed and fed!
Mary slept again until 8:30 am, as those pain pills seem to be working. We stayed in the office until the late morning. I needed some additional dirt for the garden and was planning to get it from Home Depot. As I signed on to their website, I noticed they deliver. Wow, I do not have to load the basket, wheel it to checkout, and load it into the van. For $35, they will deliver to my driveway!
Sure enough, within two hours, a lovely man in a pickup came calling and dropped off eighteen bags of fresh soil. I looked at the bags, reached into my pocket, and offered him $100 to take the pile to the back yard. At first, the delivery man said no problem, I’ll do it, but I insisted he take the money because I was thinking about me walking back and forth to the garden eighteen times, and that was not going to happen.
The pile was still big after I opened six bags already! It will be there tomorrow!
Tuesday means watyercolor day. Mary was feeling pretty good, and I loaded up the car and off we went to the paint class. I returned home and went to work, but alas, at 2:00 pm, the iPhone whistled, and it was Mary needing to come home. The back had a relapse. I jumped in the cr and raced to the class to pick her up.
She painted for just under an hour, and the result was, well, let’s say, an abstract representation of her existential crisis!
With great care, I brought her to her favorite spot, the Lazy0Boy recliner, where she had her heating pad, book, and needlepoint work ready to go.
I excused myself and headed to the garden, where I continued trimming the blackberry vines and adding new acidic soil across their bed. In another two hours, I will be done with the berry garden. I used my latest Amazon purchase, and the gloves worked great! I was able to reach across the bed without getting bitten by the thorns!
COOLJOB Thorn Proof Rose Pruning Garden Gloves for Men, Long Sleeve Padded Yard Work for Bush, Blackberry, Cactus, Heavy Duty/Puncture Resistant/Machine Washable, Xlarge, Navy
This bed is twenty feet long by 30″ wide, and I got about 60% of it trimmed and resoiled. Every year, I hope I remember which branches are protocanes and which are floricanes.
Pruning is NOT as easy as it looks!
Pruning blackberries involves two main steps: cutting back old, fruited canes (floricanes) to the ground after harvest and, during the dormant season, thinning new canes (primocanes) and shortening their laterals to 12-18 inches to encourage strong, productive growth for the next season, aiming for 4-6 strong canes per plant. Always prune in late winter/early spring or immediately after harvest, removing dead, damaged, or weak wood to improve air circulation and yield.
The trimmed plants get to lie on the concrete for a few days because then the thorns start to soften, making it easier to put them into the trash cans!
The lower left are the remaining raspberries from this past summer. I may pull them out entirely and put in new blackberries instead!
In two more hours, this bed will be done!
As it was getting dark, I came inside and fixed dinner. We had a can of maraconi with beef over rice, and I added a bowl of sliced peaches for dessert. No alcohol this evening, we went for good old H2O!
Then I sat down on the La-Z-Boy with Mary, and we watched several episodes of “Suits”. Mary saw everything, and I saw about half, the rest of the time I was checking for light leaks!
Just us!
