Not Very Good at Resting

(Especially at home in the middle of the day.)

So it wasn’t my best plan ever, to start the writing at 8:00 pm on a day when I spent hours outside in 90 degree heat trimming the black locust tree suckers that were sprouting, and the plum tree suckers that were sprouting, and the obnoxious hedgeparsleys (aka the ferny Velcro weeds) that were sprouting.

So much sprouting.

So many suckers.

Of course, the invasive blackberry vines were sprouting, too. The nice thing about those is that they seem to pull up more easily a few months after an initial clearing. They lose some of their oompapa. And the blackberry vines that were buried under a couple of feet of leaves? The ones close to the street, where a few truckloads of leaves were dumped last fall? Those guys are pretty much smothered. They valiantly are trying to push up through the leaf piles, to reassert their dominance, because they are used to being the rulers of everything around here. They’ve been the boss plants for generations, have taken over an entire corner of the property, but what they don’t know is that things have changed, that their end is near. Because now it’s easy to grab them and get them up by their roots.

Possibly this makes me a little too happy.

So today I gathered suckers and vines and downed branches and biggish sticks and added all of these to the piles alongside the road, the piles that were started a few weeks ago when a crew came through and trimmed our overgrown trees.  My landscaping friend is coming tomorrow with a chipper. That is one powerful piece of machinery. It will turn the mountains of branches into a few piles of chips. I probably spent too long outside earlier, but the fact that a chipper is arriving tomorrow gave me a lot of incentive. Anything on the side of the road will be turned into beautiful mulch. I don’t think that you can ever have too much mulch.

Before the chipping. Just one of many piles of branches and sticks on the side of the road.

Took a break from the yardwork later, but then went back out for one final walkabout. Asked my son to come get me after an hour. Told him that he should really make me come in then, because it was hot and I’d already done a lot of work.

Except when he dutifully wandered up the street and said it was time to finish up, I convinced him to let me have another twenty minutes. Because there was just a little more that I wanted to do: a few more vines down by the creek to pull. A few more downed branches to gather.  He reluctantly agreed, but he wasn’t happy about it.  He said that I need to set aside a day this week when I just “chill.” He thinks I’m working too hard.

Am I?

I told him that I enjoy the outside work. It makes me happy.

But it’s true that I probably overdid it. I woke up sore the next morning, both my low back (probably from all that bending over to weed) and my right arm, where I have my carpal tunnel issues. The carpal tunnel flare up is problematic not only because it makes yard work difficult, but also because it makes giving massages painful. It’s not a good idea to do anything that jeopardizes my income stream. I know I’ll be in bit of pain later this week when I have massages to give again.

I need to think about this whole rest and relaxation thing. Apparently I am not very good at it. Because if I have a free afternoon at home (which is one of my favorite things), there is not much that makes me happier than going outside to hack away at the blackberries. I love hacking away at the brambles and uncovering bare earth underneath.  But if it causes me problems when I return to my paid work? Maybe I need to take this whole idea of resting a little more seriously.

What do most people do when they have a free afternoon if they do not have blackberries to wrangle? I guess there is reading, a fine option for sure. Puzzles? Solitaire? Cribbage if you can find someone to play with. There is Netflix and Amazon Prime, but watching TV in the afternoon depresses me and generally leaves me with a headache.

It’s not that I can’t think of things to do. It’s just that the thing that I most want to do wears me out.

A conundrum.

After the chipping. Beautiful mulch.

Maybe I should just put on mosquito repellant, grab a book, and head out to the hammock. Except on the way  there, I would probably spy a Velcro weed. And then another. And right over there is an empty bucket where I could throw the weeds. Just a couple?

Then I’ll rest. I promise.