Looking forward to more visitors near the end of this month, and there are still things we need to do around here. But a big project that was way overdue was getting help with our yard and flowerbeds (we don’t actually grow many flowers except in pots, unless Tim plants any around our large tree in the front yard), but we do have shrubbery and we have the Mexican petunias (aka ruellias or wild petunias) that grow outside the kitchen window, as shown in this photo from last September:
Looking back, here are a few shots of the back of the property, including this one from 2023.
And later in 2023, when we had a large, dead tree removed.
Even with January’s snow, you can see it became a kind of jungle back there. The dogs thoroughly love it that way, but it was a problem for me. It was so overgrown that I couldn’t easily follow them and clean up behind them. Also, Anime loved the stump of that removed dead tree and was eating the bark and the mushrooms that grew under the bark.
Last week, we called back the yard crew to have the stump ground down, and then, as well as cleaning out that part of the yard, they worked on all the beds, front, back, and sides, and everything looks so much better. We still need to finish mulching that back bed, and we have plans for filling in spaces back there with pots/potted plants currently scattered elsewhere on the property to get color and texture. We’ll see how it looks compared to today’s photo when I take another at summer’s end.
Along with finishing the short series I watched on Netflix, I’ve finished one little project today related to future hospitality. I’ve also handled paperwork for a license I hold. Other than cleaning out refrigerator leftovers and organizing others for lunches and dinners until the leftovers are gone (a couple of days), I’m planning on reading a recently published book by a favorite author and thinking a lot about something I found on social media in the last couple of weeks.
In relation to that, this is the writing I do: occasional commentary on (mostly) strangers’ social media; rare emails, usually short though sometimes longer; this website, which often includes poetry, occasionally flash fiction, but is mostly exposition of one type or another; and fiction. What I guess I must evaluate is what of the above points are true, because some are; some are with qualifications; and some are not at all.
Wednesday got away from me–a whole lot going on at Houndstooth Hall at the moment. I read a stunning poem by Lynne Shapiro in Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems, and it inspired me to begin a character poem, but I’ll need to finish the poem later and will return to this post to add it when it’s ready. (ETA: Done! See bottom of this post.)
Below is the poem I wrote using the word list and title from Write The Poem. It’s a scene that’s maybe two novels away in the Neverending Saga, though it’s been planned a long time. It’s as if whoever put this list of words together could see into the future. My poem is the reason I thought of Steve’s sculpture.
