Alice

The last few days I have felt like Alice in Wonderland. It seems the faster I go, the behinder I get. I've been trying to work my butt off and I see little come from it. For instance, I borrowed a fence puller from neighbor Dan. I then spent three hours in the woods. There wasn't a breath of air. Buck brush, gooseberry and raspberries were all chest high. Humidity was so bad that it seemed like a jungle more then a woods in Iowa. By the time I came out of the woods, I was sweaty, filthy, ragged (I had torn my shirt even) and had little to show for the effort. My prize was nine fence posts. I had gone in hoping for forty.

I have gotten all two hundred of my trees and shrubs planted. You can't really tell by looking though. After all they are very small trees and shrubs.

Most of the flowers are in. This took significant work as I had to move a fair amount of topsoil to create the bed first. This I did with Edgar's red wagon and two buckets. If you stand in just the right place and tip your head just a bit and squinch up your eyes just so, you just MIGHT see some difference.

The hit of the week was the act of bathing outside. The water actually got hot! Yeah for solar water heating!! And somehow there is something rejuvenating about bathing outside when you are just too exhausted for words. The sun was bright and not a cloud in the sky. There was a light breeze from the east and the water was blessedly hot. I was buck naked except for my orange baseball cap. Across the front of the hat swooped in large letters "Wheaties" and across the back "breakfast of champions". The outdoor, solar shower is now officially on the to-do list!

I hope my hat is prophetic. I would much rather feel like a champion then I would Alice. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I worry about this.

louie