This morning I’ve had two cups of tea, which is my habit. I love tea, and drink it all day long, but those first two cups are the ones that get me going and stimulate my mind. It is foggy again on the Mendocino Coast, but I have high hopes that the sun will break through today.
Yesterday evening I realized that I have to accept the harsh reality that I have to cut back the growth in my yard. I’m a great believer in permaculture, and I seldom weed. I also seldom cut anything back. Last winter I realized that the blackberries were out of control and asked my husband to dig them up. He never got around to it, and now I don’t want to cut them back until we have picked all the fabulous blackberries that are developing on them. I will have lots of blackberries to use in smoothies through the winter and will be lucky if the vines don’t eat my house.
There are a lot of other things that I can cut back though and I’m looking forward to the exercise and the change. We have mountain lions where we live and I was reading recently that they use ambush as a means to catch their prey. Our yard is a perfect spot for a mountain lion ambush. I guess I’d better get to it soon. We have a huge cherry tree that probably measures about thirty feet at it’s widest part, and underneath it the thimbleberries have taken over, creating dense undergrowth. The chickens have done their best to trample the thimbleberries to no avail, and now I imagine a mountain lion hiding in there whenever I go into the yard. I think I’ll start there.
Time for a smoothie and another cup of tea. After that I will let the chickens out and attack the yard with some strong clippers.