The nuke it school of gardening

My morning run got cancelled at the last minute so I stayed home to read the papers, drink coffee, and relax. That lasted a couple hours. Then came the workout. Yes, I'm calling it a workout. Lots of muscles being used in multi-planar motions and heavy breathing. Not much cursing. Some thoughtful pauses. Bricks. A few slivers. There was a hydration and nutrition plan. Sunscreen.

Here's the end result:

And you thought I was going to show you the garden. Hah! I like to keep my readers wondering, and giving them unexpected stuff.

Today was digging out the overgrown borders around the flower boxes in the front yard. There is this woody shrub that is taking over, and it's very hard to get out. I'm sure I scattered a million seeds as I was doing all the digging. I had to pry out the brick border to get the roots. The bricks were covered by an inch of soil, roots, grass, and whatever else builds up when mother nature is let loose.

I basically dug it all out as best as possible, while trying to save the lady bugs. One of the plants and rootball together were big enough I had to think about picking it up after I managed to pry it out. This was a solid ball of roots that looked like a completely root bound plant.

Here's another one mostly dug out, showing the size of one of the roots.

That whole mess is overflowing most of my lap.

What's left looks like crap at the moment because nothing else went in, and I paid no attention to smoothing things out. There are still roots and grass in there to be dealt with. Maybe next weekend, or possibly some week nights. The patio was thoroughly raked, and that small area produced nearly two garbage bags of dead stuff. There is still a bit more to go.

I earned my glass of wine out of that. It took a long time to wash my hands and arms to get all the gunge off. Then scrub them with a nice sugar body scrub. Then hand cream, which I don't normally use. My hands are sucking it in.

What I didn't tell you about Thursday was a lovely dinner out to celebrate signing the contract for my new job. I'd been working under an interim agreement in principle, but it's nice to get it all sorted out. We went to the Selkirk Grill in Heritage Park, and we waddled out after two wonderful hours. The food there is very good, and we had the place to ourselves.

I had my eyes checked this week and I'm sure you will be all happy to know they are fine. My prescription changed again, of course, so I have to buy new glasses. The current ones have lasted 4 years so I have no complaints. Besides, they are all scuffed up from leading an adventurous life. The only downside is that the pair of lenses were about $700! Considering that I'm getting 6 different and complicated prescriptions in one pair of glasses I suppose it's not too bad, and some of it is covered by insurance.

Lots of people wear the cool Oakley or Rudy Project sunglasses when racing. I've got a set of clip on sunglasses in the car, but it's much too fussy for racing. I had been thinking about asking the eye place if they could take an old pair of lenses and glue them to the inside of the sunglasses. They had sunglasses there and can put a prescription lens into them but it's a single vision lens, same prescription for each eye. They won't work for me. But what they did have was sunglasses built to go over top of existing glasses.

So, are these cool? I'm going to try them out on my ride and run tomorrow.