Fall Clean-up was missed. The leaves have been corralling themselves into every nook and cranny, between rocks and in all the hard to get to crevasses. The pest control expert advised against letting them remain during summer as they are where ticks especially love to house themselves during their family get togethers. And since Little Red-Haired Girl loves to lay on them…well, you get the picture.

It has been too cold to even go out to cut the wood to burn, so Ms. SpoolTeacher is hoping the ticks are still elsewhere; but, she is determined to have things ready to discourage them from visiting her again…that was a horror story.

It was a beautiful sunshiny day today. A day where two layers of clothes were enough.

A little while back, Ms. SpoolTeacher started excavating the ground along her walkways with the intention to eventually expand their widths. She piled the dirt up into a heap in the middle of the yard and imagined building a raised bed there to plant with vegetables.

For a couple of months now people have been asking why she dug all the dirt up…?

Finally, she hauled all the concrete blocks from around her various yards to use to establish the perimeters. She got them as far as rowed up the length of the diagonal walk pattern on the other side of the pile of dirt. She wanted to see if it fit her vision. It did. Then she realized there was a hump and she wanted the bed to be level, so to speak. So all the blocks had to evacuate and she had to level the dirt.

She is not big on pounding markers, establishing level lines and going through all the gyrations of a pro; she prefers to use her senses and backbreaking work.

She did eventually get out her level, and was surprised to find how accurate her senses are.

Because the levels of the yard vary, she had to devise a way to keep the ground from eroding below the bricks in certain places. Steps! Voila.

She ran out of bricks just in time for Little Red-Haired Girl to let her know it was 4pm, dinner time! “Come on already, I’ve been lounging around all day. I’m hungry!”

“After all”, she said, “Every time you dug the dirt or moved the leaves, I had to move too…this is a lot of work, Mom.”

It was a day without seam work because it was such a beautifully warm, seamlessly sunshiny day.

Every night though, she does try to “spool” knit one of these caps. It keeps her busy and another thing to sell someday…once she gets her yard in shape, the garage set up again as a variety shop, and on and on so she can finally have customers again.

It’s a work in progress. Row, row, row the boat…