Does a day ever go as planned? I did get the day lillies in front of the dining room weeded. They are doing well in that sunny, but dry spot by the stone wall. So good to pull those long roots of quack grass out. It will come back, but I beat it down for a while! Ed was true to his word and came by with his lens cleaning stuff to work on the telescope--brought from Paris by my great great grandfather, James J. Walworth in 1858. The mirror needs to be recoated and sadly there is no literature existing with it to expalin all the different lenses. We couldn't get it to focus, but after Ed left, I kept tinkering with it, found etches lines on the barrel, and by lining them up and messing around, was able to get a nice clear view of the hog farm down on Cryder Creek ["The Cyder" (no R) if you are local]. I'll give Dr. Stull a call in Alfred and see if he can help me some more.
By lunch time the weather had turned very windy, with the sky to the west clay colored. Soldiering on, I went up to the shop and filled buckets with wood sawdust for mulch, but Wiz thought it would be too acid, so we'll use it on the blueberry bushes. I moved on to weeding the day lillies beside the tree lilac by the gully, which is doing quite nicely. It felt good to be able to rip garlic mustard up by the roots. We'll use old hay to mulch there. Didn't finish because the rain was coming horizontally then--my family's official description of "sea hag weather."
I retreated to the house and did what I've been threatening to do "some rainy day" for quite a while. I cleaned our funky little walk-in bedroom closet! I filled a leaf bag with discarded clothing. Found Mum's (and my) wedding gown just fine in it's box, and Dad's old fedora hat (should I give it to Dave?), relieved myself of formal tennis attire (stained) from the days when we used to go to the Hillsboro Club in Florida with Mum and Dad, did keep the brand new and very expensive tennis sneakers, snooped a tiny bit through a box of my husband's memorabilia. He is SO sentimental. Anything, no matter how pathetically poorly constructed, that was ever given to him by one of his children is kept unused as a religious relic: such as a pair of socks embroidered with "I heart you." Well, I have to admit, I couldn't part with the shiny paper medal Fern made me for cleaning up an extra large dog poop one time whne she was about ten. I hung my Pony Club Games hat with DC and coach's pins (and my pin from 1955) in the guest room closet. It was just too sentimental. Dust and mouse turds. And an indescribable feeling of calm and control to have two closets of my life clean and tidy. (I did the linen closet, with some mouse proofing foam around the stone chimney, last week.) What a housekeeper I am!
And I did go to bed, pleasantly sore, to sleep well.
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