This morning I looked around the inside of the house and I saw all that needed to be done. One of these things was the dishes, which had piled up in the past three days. I am now doing them because Pete can’t immerse his hands in dirty, hot water.

I sometimes forget what he can and cannot do because he just goes and does stuff. For instance, I held Tyra while he used a syringe to wash out her eye and then apply ointment. It occurred to me that our roles should be reversed after a day and a half of following the above-mentioned routine.

I pretty much put what needed to be done inside on the back burner, and after putting in an hour on Shelf Life, I headed outside. There was good reason for this. The weather today was the best it’s ever been around here. It was about 60 degrees and sunny, with a slight wind. The leaves are on the trees, the grass is up – even duty bound me wasn’t going to stay inside.

Tyra's sore eye

Pete and I tended to the bees. I put on the outfit because I know from experience that bees will sting you. We checked for brood – there was brood, which means the queen and her workers are doing their jobs. We gave them sugar water and then let them bee. Har har.

I got Hrimmi and Raudi out. They, who were enjoying the weather, were also feeling a bit on the lazy side. However, Raudi indicated to me when we finished riding our trails and were at the base of Jim’s Road that she was up for going around the loop. I said sure, and so off we went.

She shuffled some – she’s not in the best of shape. But she was alert and a few times, when asked, she did her rocking horse canter.

We were a few hundred yards from home when we saw Mikey the porcupine, near Rafter T’s place. He was crossing the road. Mikey is the father of all porcupines. Buddy, Poncho’s dog, took out the black rabbits up on Sybarite, but of course he’d be no match for Mikey. This all begs the question, where is the mother of all porcupines? I asked Pete, who knows of such things, and he said that she “is off doing her own thing.”

I gave Pete a hand with his gardening venture today. Together, we worked in the hoop house; beforehand, me putting compost in buckets and prepping the tomato bed and Pete planting the tomatoes in the bed. I also put the previous year’s garden detritus in muck buckets and dumped the muck bucket behind the hoop house, where the winter manure is.

As I worked, I thought about why it is that I don’t like gardening. After many years of thinking about this, I determined, finally, that the answer is two-fold. First of all, what’s to be done overwhelms me. There is, of course, the ongoing work in the hoop house. But in addition, there is work to be done in the other gardens, the greenhouse, and the orchard.

And tonight, we worked on the BLBP volunteer coordinator list. My goodness, what a full day it was. And, tomorrow what a full day it will be.

Next: 129. 5/11/25: Packing as much as possible into the Day