I went to bed thinking I might go back down to the woods early this morning and cut some more privet, but it was pretty cold last night and I was pretty sore from yesterday. So instead, I poked around the house for a while, had some coffee and toaster pastries and waited on it to warm up a bit.
By 10:30 am or so, the sun had taken the chill out of the air, so I decided that I would do some more work on my Hügelkultur row at the west end of the garden. I got the shovel out of the shop and started digging with the intention of just digging a little bit more. But once I got started, I couldn't stop, and I ended up digging out the rest of the row.
 |
| The trench |
I finished up right before noon and went in for a bite of lunch. Then it was back down to the woods to continue the work on the privet.
I think I took out 15 more trees of various sizes today, pulled up about 40 small privet seedlings and planted the rest of the black walnuts I had collected yesterday. While I really wanted to keep going, I finally decided if I didn't stop, I was probably not going to be able to move tomorrow! It wasn't really so much the cutting that was wearing me out...it was dragging the limbs up the hill to throw them on the brush pile. I've pulled a muscle in my back once before and I have no interest in ever doing that again!
I just left the limbs that I set aside to shred down in the woods. I'll just have to go back for them another day. But that's ok...they will wait.
When I got back to the house, I sat in the recliner for a while to let my back rest. RAF had planned on helping me with the rotting logs that are still out in the field...I wanted them in my Hügelkultur row but couldn't move them until they were cut up into smaller sections. After I rested a bit, he went out and cut a few of them for me, and then I used my cart to bring some of them up to the garden. Unfortunately, I didn't get finished bringing the logs up to the garden before I was again running out of energy...and daylight. But that's ok...they will wait.
I don't guess it was a wasted weekend because I did get a few things done. But it just stinks to have so many things you want to do, and then finally have to admit that you just can't do them all because of your stupid bad back. It probably didn't help that I turned one of the compost bins the other day and turned part of another one this morning. And I'm sure it didn't help to trying to heave those big privet limbs onto the brush pile. I should have cut them into smaller pieces, so they weren't so heavy.
I once had a T-shirt that I bought from a guy who wrote a book about using the Win32 API with Visual Basic. The shirt said, "Work smarter, not harder." I need to see if I can find that shirt.