Weeding...

Weeding...  If you've ever pulled weeds in a planting or garden, I'll bet your feelings about it are similar to mine: it's hard work, hot in the summer (when there are the most weeds!), and satisfying only in the sense of having it over with.

That was not my mom's feeling about weeding.  She loved it!  Weeding wasn't a chore for her at all.  Rather, it was an activity she thought of as a treat – on many days, the absolute highlight of her day.  Further, she took enormous satisfaction in completely clearing the weeds from a planting.

I have many memories of her bent over, executing weeds with glee.  This, despite the fact that bending over was always hard and painful for her (as the cartilage of one of her hip joints was almost completely gone).  One memory in particular: her raucous whoop of victory as she pulled the last weed out of a bed of scratchy junipers for sale in our nursery while I was watering an adjacent bed.  Julius, our handyman on the nursery, came running to find out what was wrong – and left shaking his head at the crazy woman who found joy and fulfillment in weeding...

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Well, I didn't get done with my bookkeeping yesterday – stuff happened!  Mainly the concrete guys.  They didn't finish putting up the forms, but we're expecting them today to finish the job.  Concrete should be poured later in the day.  We hope...

I also got surprised by a large John Deere mower starting to work in the field north of our house (part mine, part belonging to Tim D.).  The alfalfa was beautiful in that field, but six inches or so short of when it would ordinarily be mowed.  I texted Tim to make sure it wasn't an error – but it wasn't.  He's going to be gone for a few days (he's one of the adults supervising a boy's camp), and he figured this was a perfect window of time to get the hay down, dried, and baled.  By the time he comes back, it will all just be sitting in the field waiting for him to store it away.  It sure is pretty on the field right now, and it smells great!  I suspect Scott N. will mow our south field in about a week, after it's reached maturity.

Last fall, Debbie and I upgraded our iPads from our four-year-old model 4s.  That means we've had two used model 4s just lying about while we tried to figure out something useful to do with them.  Purely by serendipity, Michelle H., our friend and house cleaner, mentioned a few days ago that she was probably going to have to buy a new computer so that her youngest kids could do their homework.  She was looking for some advice on a reasonable computer at the lowest cost possible, and had no idea that we had these iPads doing nothing useful.  Problem solved!  She bought a couple of Otterbox cases to preserve the iPads from the depredations of her children, had her son-in-law set them up, and now her kids are happily doing their homework on tablets.  I saw A.J. (her youngest) this morning whizzing about the iPad user interface with no problem at all, having a great time.  It feels good to have found such a great use for those two things...