The last couple of days have been beautiful and I've been taking advantage of the nice weather and helping my mom and step dad with outdoor projects at their house. Wednesday was spent clipping raspberry and loganberry canes and burning debris, and Thursday I spent moving small logs and wood pieces, cutting back peony bushes, pulling and dumping weeds, and learning how to use a mattock. For those you that don't know, a mattock is much like a large pickaxe and is often used for digging into hard soil, as well as removing tree trunks. I got to learn how to use one by spending a good amount of time hacking away at the roots of a small oak trunk. I finally was able to remove the trunk, but, needless to say, my whole body is going to be sore for the next day or two, since repeatedly swinging one of those over your shoulder is definitely a full body workout. I am perfectly fine with being sore tomorrow though, because I know that I'll have a reason to. Whenever I am sore as a result of doing some physical activity I actually almost enjoy it, because I feel like I've earned it and I know that I'm building muscle. That may make me a masochist, but oh well. On another note, I found a perfect little lemon balm plant that had started to grow right in the middle of my mom's strawberry patch, and since my mom considers thinks of these plants more as weeds than herbs, since they always sprout up and spread everywhere, I'm taking this one home to use in my container garden.
Below are some pictures I took Thursday. For some reason they ended up kind of wonky looking though. I guess next time I should try using an actual camera instead of my phone.
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The mattock
(aka my new favorite tool) |
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The hole that the stump had been in.
It looks smaller in this photo than it was
(probably 3 and a half feet). |
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The offending stump.
(again it looks a lot smaller than it was :P ) |
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| A terrible picture of Bumpers the cat. I'll get a better one soon. |
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| My new Lemon Balm plant :) |
