Busting Their Butts

Spring is here and our place is alive with wildflowers. The roses by the front porch are starting to bloom, bees are all over the clover, and these beautiful yellow flowers whose name I don’t know are everywhere. Yesterday there was a gentle breeze blowing and it seemed like the whole pasture was waving at us as they moved in the wind. I could sit and watch them forever.

But there was no sitting to be done at our place yesterday. Son Travis and his wife Geli came over to help get Terry’s garden planted. The first step was to unload a truckload of bags of fertilizer and spread it over the garden, and Travis and Geli raked it to spread it even further.

Then we laid down landscape fabric, which keeps weeds out but is still permeable to let water through. It comes in 100-foot rolls, and once it’s rolled out large metal pins are stuck through it to hold it into place.

There is only so much I can do with my bad back, and though she is stubborn and tries to deny it Terry has her limitations, too. But the kids and Terry busted their butts all day long, planting a variety of seedlings and seeds.

I think sometime in the afternoon they were both wondering what the heck they had gotten themselves into. It’s bad enough they’ve got to do all of this work at their place, which they enjoy, but to do it for somebody else is a real gift that we very much appreciate.

So now we have all kinds of veggies, including corn, okra, summer squash, zucchini, spaghetti squash, cucumbers, several varieties of beans, tomatoes, asparagus, spinach, rhubarb, strawberries, and others that I can’t remember. The only thing I like out of all of that is corn and strawberries, but Terry will be eating well and having lots to share with other people.

Travis also helped me pull some more of the fence posts, so now we have a clean view from the backyard out to the pasture and garden. Most of them came out pretty easy using the front-end loader on the tractor, but two or three of them really gave us fits before we were able to get them loose.

After the kids left, or escaped, depending on how you look at it, I watered everything well and spread organic deer repellent around the garden. We will be putting up deer fencing as soon as Tractor Supply gets more of the materials we need in.

Thank you Travis and Geli. I can’t tell you how much you mean to us and how much we appreciate everything you do to help us out.

It’s Thursday, so it’s time for a new Free Drawing. This week’s prize is a USB drive loaded with all of the digital back issues of the Gypsy Journal RV travel newspaper for the years 2003 through 2017. They are in PDF format and will provide you with weeks of great reading about places to visit from coast to coast and our adventures as fulltime RVers. The normal cost of the back issue collection is $75. To enter, all you have to do is click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – Take risks. You are a lot better off being scared than being bored. ~ Harvey Mackay