“Remoted” – Day 103 (Saturday)

The morning workout was the
stone carry and stack.

It was cloudy for parts of the day which allowed some physical labor to be accomplished. Neighbor Guy has been taking out a lot of stonework edging and a low wall and replacing it with a poured concrete patio.  He was going to pay someone to haul the stone away, but now it’s in my yard for free. I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing with it yet, but that inspiration will come. This morning I donned the work gloves and schlepped the stones, one at a time, across the shared driveway, across my front lawn, stepped over the remainder of the post and rail fence (because I couldn’t get the rail out), then down the shared driveway on the other side of the yard, and into my back yard. That, unfortunately, was the only way to get to my back yard.

For whatever unexplored deep-seated, neurotic reasons, I count steps when I walk. I’ve done it for as long as I can remember, and I don’t usually realize it until suddenly “26, 27, 28…,” is marching through my head. Once aware, I consciously count until the inevitable point when I lose count and the loop starts over. Depending upon the size of the stone I was carrying and the length of the stride I could manage, it was either 38 steps or 50 to the back yard. The six  bigger, rectangular stones at the end of the process are much heavier than the 20 smaller stones, and they really slowed me down. Maybe I should have started with the heavy ones, then the rest would have felt lighter.

A much smaller rose bush.

After the hour of moving big stones and sweating, I fetched the big scissor things from the shed, and cut back the once sprawling rose bush to a much tidier, compact form. The new front yard picket fence will be going in soon, and that bush would be a problem working around in its wild and prickly state. Later in the day, after watching portions of a dance festival livestream and doing an online dance class, I headed back out to the yard to dig out irises, also part of the fence installation preparation. I expected it to be a bit of chore, considering I was using just a trowel, but it was even harder than I imagined. It’s surprising how quickly a few irises transplanted from a friend’s yard grew into a very dense clump. Oy. I got half the clump out, and then got half of that transplanted to the back yard along the chain link fence. 

A fence length of transplants.

This gardening and yard work stuff is no joke. Everything I put in the ground since buying the house needs thinning – the hostas, the bleeding heart, the irises. I started with the urgent issues – the plants that would be in the way and/or trampled with the fence installation, but there is still so much left to do. The labor feels good, but dang, the soreness is already setting into my legs and shoulders. My hamstrings are screaming. If I did this regularly, I’d have a buff yard work body. Maybe I should just move the stone from one side of the yard to the other every day instead of doing any sort permanent installation.