Dancing Away Hard Labor

My Dancing Partner at Silverman's Last Night

Our last free weekend in a while was devoted to yard work. I was back on my wall while my wife finally tackled the growing population of flowers she’d purchased over the past couple weeks. She’s in the middle of transforming the deck back to summer mode after the cold of winter/spring rendered it depressingly somber. I had what I thought was the easy task of moving the debris pile from the front yard gardens to the other side of the wall before adding the next layers of bricks. I totally underestimated either the difficult nature of the task or my increasingly diminished physical abilities.

Tulips Are Out - Pile I ad to Move at Far End of New Wall

It took me nearly two hours to move the piles the short distance, mainly because I couldn’t just shovel the piles as was laced with so much cut up sod. I made use of my long dormant water polo skills by backhand flipping a lot of it over the wall before I devised a system using the mulch shovel and rake. Buddy, my less than able assistant, was a little miffed because he’d been using the now defunct pile as a lookout perch. By late afternoon I had the piles moved and the next two rows of bricks in place and can finally see the end of the tunnel. It needs one more row of bricks and then the capstone level and some top soil.

End of the Day Progress - One More Row

The day was not without adventure. My wife was planting dahlias in the completed terraces when I was maneuvering at the far downhill end of the new wall. I was so tired and to be perfectly honest clumsy that when I shifted my feet around I lost my balance. As I started to fall the only thing I could grab was a nearby small tree. I knew if I did that the tree was coming out of the ground and I’d still end up on my butt. I accepted I was going to fall and prepared to land (old airborne ways die hard). I miscalculated in that second though while considering options. I forgot I was on a fairly steep part of the hill and the fall took a lot longer that I imagined. Two somersaults later I was at the bottom of the hill with a very solicitous Wonder Pooch inquiring into my health. My first thought, after ascertaining I was uninjured except for a sore shoulder, was checking to see if my wife had witnessed my pratfall. I was saved that indignity and only told her about it a couple hours later. If she had seen it I know I’d have to argue her out of a trip to the ER (she tends to over-diagnose).

Helping Dad out 

You Missed a Piece

We weren’t the only ones doing yard work yesterday. Both the New Hampshire and New Jersey clusters were also out in the beautiful spring day. My son tackled the first lawn mowing of the year while Wingman was trying to impose some sort of order onto their overgrown backyard. He enlisted the stalwart help of the First Blog Reader who was only too happy to help out. My daughter posted a video of her backyard adventures to Instagram which became a huge hit down in Panama. My wife was yelling at me that we needed to get on Instagram when my daughter reminded her that we were, that she’d done it for us during the last trip.

What to Do Next?

We were both a little battered and bruised after the long day working outside but we still decided to go out for dinner and dancing. We’d made several aborted plans over the past few months and overruled what our bodies were trying to tell us. We had dinner and then three hours of dancing at Maxwell Silverman’s and it was so much fun. We hadn’t had a night out like this since early last year and it was exactly the medicine both of us needed. We left for home around 1130pm as the weirder crowd and attendant music started to arrive. Sleep was not a problem last night.