What a day!!!

It was such a beautiful day and you know how my yard calls to me when it is a beautiful day! So I headed out early this morning to pick up the limbs that I pruned off my trees and grape vines several months ago. I just trimmed them and let them lie to be picked up another day. Wouldn't recommend doing that but that is what I did. And I had a pickup load of limbs to be hauled off. I'm hoping Poppy  comes home and emptys the truck for me. That's why I made a point of using his truck. Ha. Ha.

Then I raked all around my flowers and pulled the dead grass so it wouldn't get a head start on me once the weather got warm.

Then I raked the leaves out from under our porch. They blow under there every year and because we have a fireplace I try to keep all the leaves raked away from around the house. I do this several times during the winter because once the wind starts blowing and because we are surrounded by trees, leaves are constantly blowing up around the house.

Then I went out and mowed the leaves under the trees around our gazebo. It's really a shelter house but we've called it a gazebo since we built it. Just bear with us. We're getting old and sometimes we don't call things by their real name.

Then Poppy  came home and brought the tractor up and began pushing leaves up into piles and setting them on fire. I don't think you understand when I say rake leaves that we have acres of leaves and they get really thick. There are some drawbacks to living out in the woods.

You'll notice I also had a couple little helpers. They were impressed with the fire!

This is the mess I have around the trees. Every year I mow around these trees and still have the mess up close to the trees. So Poppy said "burn the leaves around the trees instead of cleaning by hand." Or something along those lines.

Here he's carrying fire from one tree to another tree.

You get the idea.

Isn't this a glorious sight! I've waited several years to get cleaned up around those trees.

Burn Baby, Burn!

Then I mowed around the fire in case the wind came up tonight. Don't want the fire to start back up and catch more leaves on fire while we are asleep. Reminds me of the time a highway patrolman friend of ours happened by our house late one night. We had burned earlier in the day and late that night the wind whipped up and a pile of wood beside a tree started burning. Embers were blowing everywhere. My son and I were out there on a four wheeler carrying water trying to put them out. So, I think about those kind of things happening now!

And last of all, of course , five minutes before it got dark the belt came off .

And, oh yes, I forgot that I had 8 whole chickens to bake today because we have a beef at the butchers and I am trying to clear some freezer space. So it's now 8:00 P.M. and I am ready to start cutting up chickens. Lucky for me that I have two ovens.

I'm getting too old for this kind of hard labor. Of course, my kids say I say that every year, and when Spring comes around I'm always back outside doing the same thing again that I did last year and by the end of the day, once again, I can hardly walk.

Isn't life grand!!!