It’s time to start pruning, a job which I like because if it’s done right, it can help plants tremendously.

It’s also a job that I hate because it can be physically challenging (forsythias because of the height, roses because of the thorns) but most especially because if it’s done wrong, you have to wait at least one and maybe two seasons for the plant to recover.

I started with the forsythias at Edgewater a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been working on the roses at Dixon for quite a while, and even though it’s early, think I’m about finished with them.

I trimmed the decoratives grasses at both houses some weeks ago. The big ones probably won’t start growing until May. The hibiscus also won’t be up until warmer weather.

I’ve been removing dead wood from the holly on the side and the bushes in the front: the little azaleas, which took an awful beating, and the inkberries, which fared quite well. They might need a heavier pruning, but not today because we had showers earlier and it’s still quite wet and raw.

Those plants are all pretty easy to figure out. Others are more difficult to judge, like the butterfly bushes. There seem to be different schools of thought on Montauk daisies. I may ask about those when I interview at Mahoney’s on Wednesday.

Hydrangeas are a conundrum as well, but I’m planning to meet someone at Highfield tomorrow to prune theirs, and hope to learn a trick or two for mine.

Got an email from Burpee today that the seeds purchased with Cara and Ed’s generous wedding gift have shipped. Time to get some more Earth boxes, I think.

Yesterday was about the nicest we’ve had so far this year, so I touched up the fence, scrubbed the screen door and painted the front door frame and kickplate.

Of course, that means I now need to paint the front of the house, which looks lousy compared to the almost-good-as-new door.

I had another dream about being on a trip and losing, forgetting, failing to keep track of things, this time, pieces of paper with notes on them.

I woke up a young man by mistake and he shrieked at me.

Everyone hated me in this dream. It was clear that I was deeply resented because I was a nuisance. I was doing things out of order, failing to bring the important pieces of paper with me. I don’t remember what was on the papers, but it was something like an itinerary, information needed to continue my trip.

I wish I could have a flying dream instead.

I got out the lawnmower for the first time this year.

This was the easiest way to get leaves and other small debris off the grass.

I used the blower, too, to clean up more of the ever-present oak leaves.

Did some weeding – already – mostly errant grass.

Had forgotten that I planted spring bulbs in the vegetable garden!

Put out pest control, too, although it sprinkled a bit thereafter. Forecasts were way off today. When I started, the sky was bright blue, no rain in sight; it came on very quickly.

Didn’t realize how hungry I was until I pulled fish and chicken out of the oven. I almost could have chewed my arm off.

Paul Krugman hates outsourcing federal work to contractors. He claims that bureaucrats in the federal government have gotten a bad rap.

Have I got news for him.

I worked as a contractor in a federal agency last summer and was treated abominably.

The working conditions were lousy, most particularly the constant back-stabbing and tattle-tale-ing.

Most of the people I worked with were conscientious and tried to make the best of a bad situation, but they were not as driven as those in the private sector to keep up their skills or do things efficiently and cost-effectively.

It made me wish that Libertarian Presidential candidate Harry Browne were still with us. If Harry had been elected, he would have done away with the whole mess. He used to joke about decimating the federal civil service system, and requiring a pledge of allegiance to Libertarian principles by those remaining: “all six of us”.

Too bad he never got that chance.

Pix when it gets a little sunnier. We dodged the April Fool’s Day snow that’s fallen North and West of Boston, but it’s still rainy and overcast here.

Lots of daffs and tulips coming up as well as Stella d’Oros and Daylilies.

We are behind last year. By this time, the rabbits had eaten all my crocuses in the front yard. Guess it’s not too soon to put out pest control, maybe tomorrow if it’s drier.

© All Rights Reserved by sylvia1sam

I’m tired of trying to be the best of the best of Ron’s priors.

– As sexy as Melody, Gloria and Zorba-girl;
– As aesthetically gifted and as good a housekeeper as Benny;
– As competent as Annette;
– As masterful a cook as Jennifer.

I’ll never make it and it’s wearing me out, trying to make the house perfect, our sex life perfect, my appearance perfect, the cat perfect, the yard perfect, my income perfect, my style of lingerie perfect.

Ron says the thing that counts the most for him is that I love him and want to make him happy.

Well, where on planet Earth does that count for anything in a marriage? I mean, COME ON – loving your husband is more important than your looks, your weight, your clothing, your sense of humor, your witty conversations, your ability to make his friends envy him?

Among the people I grew up with, I never once heard it said that any husband loved and honored his wife because she loved him.

Were they that far out of the mainstream?

There’s 519 miles between Eugene, Oregon and Berkeley, California.

Ron’s ex hitchhiked there and back in 1978 – with a little child.

They’d had an argument and she disappeared. For two days. And it didn’t occur to anyone to be concerned.

Lord, am I grateful that I never got into drugs; at least, not at that level of oblivion.

Put two and two together and you come up with

cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo.

At least, that’s how I feel about the last 20-odd years of Ron’s life in Berkeley.

It’s about giving up pay and service credit to act as chauffeur for a patronizing snob on long, unnecessary road trips supporting a very expensive hobby.

It’s about a “best” friend who so distrusts Ron’s judgment that he won’t allow me, his wife, as an overnight guest in his home.

It’s about Ron’s insistence – at age almost 65 with a bad leg and a bad back – that he can drive his 2-wheel drive, 14-20 mile to the gallon GMC Safari van 3,500 miles across country in five days rather than pay a company to transport it. For essentially the same money. Or wanting me to fly to Berkeley and put us up in a motel for a week to help him pack and clean his place instead of hiring the movers and Merry Maids for the purpose.

It’s about a Worker’s Compensation bureaucrat who is delaying Ron’s move to the East Coast and preventing him from getting appropriate medical care – but hasn’t approved paying him a dime in over a year from the date the claim was accepted!

I started listening to Ron’s tales of the otherworld known as Berkeley, California, at the end of September. He relates these things so matter-of-factly that it’s only last night, when he told me about the Worker’s Compensation gambit, that the insanity of all of it hit me for the first time.

There’s got to be something about California.

I’m recalling Donald’s Nabeena days, when he was snookered by a fast-talking Nigerian huckster who convinced him that he was a prince. Donald was mesmerized, half out of his mind, dazed, babbling.

California is beautiful, to be sure, and the climate is temperate in the Bay Area and Orange County, but it seems to knock some people off-balance.

Then again, after investing tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours in her house, my neighbor has just sold it because she doesn’t like the way the people across the street keep their yard.

Maybe insanity isn’t a singularly West Coast phenomenon after all.