A quick update on my last post. The weed I was worried about is probably (98% sure) not Japanese knotweed, according to a friend of mine who had it in her previous garden. She looked at the pictures and assures me it isn’t it. I’m waiting until she sees it IRL (in real life) before I breathe a sigh of relief, however. Still, I feel a bit better. The plant in question looks a lot like bee balm, as I mentioned, and has actually turned up in my bee balm patch, so maybe it’s a relative come over to visit. Not sure. I will keep you informed.
I’m suddenly noticing sawfly larvae eating a couple of my rose bushes. Little green caterpillar-like things. They’re on their way to completely defoliating my poor roses. I read up on them and it looks like I’ve got to start picking them off with a vengeance, or I’ll end up with skeleton rose shrubs. I took a few off yesterday, but more have to go tomorrow!
Today was rainy, so I took a break from gardening and tried to sort out some extra belongings. I now have a garbage bag full of stuff that is going to Renaissance, mostly easy stuff like purses and shoes. It is a start, but I hardly made a dent in the long list of things that belong to us that we don’t need and never use. I’m not sure how other people deal with this, but I find that the hard part is knowing how to divest myself of these things. Old computers, old tax records, old pictures of family members, some you never met, these are the hardest things to deal with. I’m afraid to throw out (give away? dispose of?) computers because of the leaking of important info that can (apparently) happen. The old tax records just have to be taken to the shredder. Like that will ever happen. Old pictures and documents from your ancestry are the hardest, because there’s a feeling that you’re throwing out a precious record of yourself and your parents, grandparents, etc. ; but what do you do with them? At a certain point, is anybody interested in what your great-grandma looked like? At what point does it stop being relevant? What did people do before you could scan pictures to computers? People just ended up throwing them in the garbage; someone, somewhere made that decision. A hard one, maybe, or maybe not for some.
So that was my rainy day conundrum. I am one iota closer to a more Zen home. One iota’s worth of stuff is at the door ready to go.
Believe it When I See It, by Ron Sexsmith. If you can get past his rather underwhelming vocals, he’s one of the best song writers around. He’s got his own sweet, nerdy charm, too.
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