Two days, two venues

Yesterday was a spent outside, except when the rain forced us to retreat indoors.  Conveniently, those times coincided, first, with an early lunch and, second, about the moment when all we really wanted to do was fall in a heap.  With the rainfall during the day and through the night we are grateful that our part of the world is a inch wetter. 

I don't know what it is about the projects we take on.  They grow from a straightforward task -- like thinning and limbing up the pine trees in the grove -- into an exhausting, multi-day (translated multi-week) scheme -- in this case involving digging up briars, Japanese honeysuckle, small sweet gums and winged elms, hacking down permissions and expanding the area of attention well beyond the grove.  I'm even talking about weed-eating the entire three acres.  JUST STOP.  Our saving grace in cases like this is age-related physical limitations; we cannot work as hard and/or as long as we used to.  We have to stop.  

Anyway, today was less physical.  With Tal at the golf course I set my sights on another venue, staying inside to tend the laundry, putting the office in order, placing a bunch of telephone calls, seeing a directee and producing a pleasant, thoughtful supper.  While the rice microwaved and the rolls baked, I stepped outside into a glorious late afternoon, a luscious twenty minutes, with the camera.  I didn't want to come in, but I didn't want to hear the smoke alarm more.

So, enjoy some of what I saw.  

The maples along the edge of the pond are putting on a huge show. 

The bark's rather nice to look at, too.

On Tuesday Tal began mowing the lawn to clear away the winter's accumulation of leaves and finished up yesterday.  It looked so serene this afternoon as I walked back up to the house.