random thoughts – Day 2,215 (Friday) – yard labor on a nice day

The thrift store item rework continued, but on a small scale. The pink skirt had the waistband and zipper removed yesterday, and today the panels of the skirt were ironed to remove the creases from the box pleats. Instead of making a hip belt, today’s idea was to make a top with it and the pattern pieces were tested on the fabric. The pattern fits without issues and with a little fabric left over, but the working and thinking stopped there.

The next costuming challenge was working out the depth of tiers for a four tier 25-yard skirt. The objective was to see if there is enough fabric on hand or if more is needed.  There are options for the number of tiers which affects the yardage needed for each one (and the cutting involved). I think I found a way that doesn’t require additional fabric, but the process really made my head hurt.

Overgrown with questionable health.

The weather was warm and windows were opened to air out the house. It was too nice to be inside any longer. Gears were shifted and the role was changed from indoor domestic to yard laborer/shrub trimmer, this time in the front yard. The loppers were enlisted to help trim underneath the front hedges, rhododendrons and two other plants of unknown species. Two of the mystery plants, one at each end of the house, were really easy to clean up. The dead looking branches were rotted at ground level and came out with barely a touch, which didn’t seem like a good sign for the overall health of the plants. The plant at the far end of the house has some yellow buds (but not a lot) and I'm guessing it's forsythia.

The loppers were helpful in trimming the underside of the overgrown hedges. They hang over the width of the paved walk. The top and sides were trimmed last fall, but it wasn’t possible to cut them back as much as it needs. The fall trim revealed a lot of brown needles in the middle of one of them which is even worse now.

Reasonably sized hedge and
half-dead mystery plant (forsythia?).

Trimming the hedges from underneath involved sitting on the paved walk and peering under the shrubbery to see the dead stuff, the branches growing along the ground, and the specific branches encroaching on the walk. It was a great way to clear my head of all the math, think about something besides fabric yardage, and top off the air in my head.

Giant green hedge blobs are about as boring as a carpet of grass and I kept thinking I want to pull out both overgrown hedges and plant a mix of flowers. The hedge removal idea is a project much larger than I can handle myself and is at the bottom of the growing list of house chores.