Winterizing

My work is never done on this farm. 

(That's me pretending to be living the life of my dreams!)

I don't yet have a farm or even an entire acre to care for, but let me tell you, caring for less than a quarter of an acre isn't easy either. (I'm going to fail at farming, I can already tell.)

I had the day off today, so I got up at 9-ish (any farm animal would have been tearing down the door for some food by then. whatevs.) and got outside to do some winterizing and raking of the million leaves that the gorgeous tree out front has not-so-politely dropped to cover every square inch of that less-than-a-quarter-acre.

This was taken weeks ago when this tree still had respect for itself.

Dang. I hate pine trees. Absolutely hate them. The backyard also happens to be covered in them.

Pine needles are not fun to rake or jump in.

I got stabbed at least 30 times by a raspberry bush I am trying to destroy.

If you ever think you're going to want a raspberry bush, don't get one.

It spreads EVERYWHERE, looks evil, feels evil, and in my case, never bears fruit.

But don't worry, my day wasn't only spent raking and removing thorns from my hands, good things happened too!

I found some rose hips growing on my favorite rose plant (after looking through hundreds of photos of white roses, I'm thinking it's a Saratoga Floribunda rose). Apparently rose hips aren't very common anymore (or maybe I'm just a lazy gardener), but they occasionally appear if you don't prune the flowers off after they're done blooming. The hips that form from the flowers are essentially the fruit of the rose. And they're edible! They're popular for teas and are very high in Vitamin C. I'm kind of weary of eating them because they have these creepy hairs inside... but that's my loss.

I also cut back my Black Eyed Susan plant and saved up a bunch of the seeds to plant in the spring, so if anyone wants some Black Eyed Susans in their garden, let me know!

Basically, I'm a laissez-faire gardener. As much as I would love to spend more time out there, I can really only carve out time for serious-ish maintenance twice a year, but they're plants, they know what they're doing out there. Except for those raspberries, they have no idea what they're doing.

After such a productive day, the only thing left to do was to get an oil change and buy myself a treat!

Got myself a new "coloring" book! I got myself Taro Gomi's book Squiggles a few years ago and love it - think of it as a sketchbook with a little bit of guidance. This is kind of the same thing but with yummy things like shoes and shirts and hair.

Can't wait!

When my sister and I were little, she'd go through every new coloring book we got and color in the lips and hair of every girl and I'd get left with finishing up everything else. Operating under kid-logic, that's the most evil thing you could do to somebody. Operating under adult-logic, it's still pretty evil. I finally get to color my own lips and even draw my own hair on these pages! 

I'm probably not even going to show her this book, just in case.