This Mother's Day, I had to put on a pair of latex gloves and clean out a chicken's impacted vent (if you're not squeamish, Google it; if you are, don't). Last Mother's Day, I died.

I think this year was better than last year.

Actually it was good to take stock of how far I've come. I spent a chunk of today sitting in the sun, weeding. Leonard [1] came, along with our friends Laura and Tom and their friend Kelly, and we did a yard cleanup. It's looking semi-decent out there.

I astonished myself by cleaning up the small bed in the front by the lamp post. I dug out the weeds and planted the rest of the alyssum and white petunias to go with the deep red ones. I found a sack of seeds from 1989 (!) and spread some ancient alyssum seeds out in front, too. If they sprout, great; if they don't, that's fine too. (I have a TON more seeds of different kinds and I'm just going to spread them around and see what happens.)

Then I went out back and sat on a bucket, weeding out the completely overrun raspberry bed. I found a bunch of beach strawberries had put out runners everywhere and will probably cover that bed given time and relief from cleavers and dock. I didn't come close to finishing but it looks better than it did.

Going through the yard today, we found that the satsuma (planted in 2005) has set about 18 plums and the apples (late 2006) a dozen apiece. One of the gooseberry bushes is covered and there are currants on a couple of the bushes. Fun!

The part I'm most looking forward to is the bean house. We moved the girls' old swingset frame to a sunny patch and we're going to use it as an A-frame trellis that the girls can crawl inside. I just need some bean seeds. I'm going to plant sunflowers around it, too.

Then I came inside and collapsed for three hours.

But you know what? It was worth it.

I hope your Mother's Day was good, too.

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