Week 49 - Gardening at Christmas

The week started with Andrea volunteering to work on Bob's socks to spare me negative knitting and ended with me working outside in just a t-shirt. In between there were appointments scheduled for January (mamogram, physical and colonoscopy), cats taken to the vet and lots of Christmas decorating. I even worked a couple of hours one morning helping Dana with yet another thing that never happened in my 21 years in the job. It was something different every day.

My silver Christmas tree went into the front window on Tuesday, after a trip to Dollar General to buy new lights. I got my live trees - one for the deck and one for inside - as my first stop on my Wednesday errands and lunch day in Lincoln. On Thursday I put up my inside tree, made a cute valance for my side door and hung my door decorations. On Friday, I put up the deck tree after another trip for new lights and then used the trimmings to decorate pots at the front and side doors. With that, phase one of decorating was done.

It was time for some wrapping. With my tree aglow across the room, I started prepping presents for mailing. I had 3 packages done and scheduled a USPS pick up for Saturday, leavingjust one to go, which would be bigger so UPS. I had the packages out at 7:00 am on Saturday and when they were still there at 9:00 pm, I took them inside figuring they'd missed me. Nope. I got an email that they tried to pick them up at 9:47 that night, which is when my mail came. Wow! I packed up my last box but it wasn't as big as I thought so would have 4 to drop at the post office on Monday. Check that off.

It was gorgeous all weekend and I went out to just putter a bit and found myself cutting sunflowers and weed trees for a couple of hours. The area beside the garage was clear by the time I was done. On Sunday, I took down all the hanging pots and planters and dumped their contents in the wheel barrow. I put the pots away in the garage and msg'd to see if the kid who mows for me could come and pick up the now huge brush pile by the alley and the new one by the garage. Then my yard would be pretty much ready for winter. I made good use of the last really warm days for awhile.

I did end the week with a bit of gastric distress Sunday night but otherwise it was a great week. I'd drop the packages on Monday and I'd be ready for Christmas. It's still odd that I'm done so early but that's what happens when you have to mail your presents so early. Time to relax!