Tired and sore on Thursday.....

My wife and I went to my parents home to continue our quest to get it ready for sale. I hadn't mowed the yard for a couple of weeks so I did that first. While mowing I decided that even though I have more important things to do, I have to clean up my mom's two roses. As soon as I finished mowing and hand trimmed more stray trees from the fence in the back yard, I took the shears over to the roses and started. The one was blooming inspite of the neglect. My mom loved those bushes and I just haven't had time to do anything for them.
I first clipped out all of the hops vines that had totally taken them over, covering all the foliage. I then trimmed out all of the dead wood and the trees around them. During that process I ripped gashes in my hands. I then trimmed back the one non-blooming rose so that it might bloom once this year. The other one, I trimmed back the spent buds and cut a bouquet to take home.
My mom loved her roses and every time I would buy and plant one for her she would get excited. Also she was so generous with her roses. She was always taking one bloom to whom ever she was visiting. She always sent one home for me to give to my wife or if Della was along she was given one.
The bouquet that I brought home was put into one of her uglier vases that we were going to sell or give away, or throw away. But the flowers looked great in it. I was too tired to do a good set up so I took it outside to photograph it.
The real reason I am so sore is that I had to crawl in a very narrow space under the house to cut a drain pipe. I had to crawl on my stomach most of the length of the house and when I finally got to the location I was wedged in with no room to spare. The space kept getting smaller the closer I got. I had an extension cord tied to my jeans loop and a reciprocating saw in one hand. I had to use my left arm, not my strong arm, raise the reciprocating saw, and squeeze the trigger. It worked, I did get it severed, so that I could get an old cement shower base out of the bathroom. In being wedged I bruised a rib, which brings back memories when I actually broke a rib in my own crawl space. The muscles are not use to doing moves in crawling so I have also discovered new muscles.
My zinnias are really doing well, and this particular one is much larger than most. It is almost in focus. The color is made up of so many different dark and lights of magenta.
I like to call this photo spots of color. Zinnias have good foliage but they do photograph spotty. This is my planting in my Van Memorial garden. I will show it in a few weeks in full bloom and the starting dead grass space where my old van sat for a year. Thanks for reading....