Clean

I spent the whole weekend cleaning. I mean like the whole weekend because I got up at 6:00 each day and fell into bed exhausted at 8:30. And I mean like cleaning as in rake up all the leaves and windfall from last week's storm, and pick up the dog poop in the yard, and sweep the porch and the patio and the street in front of the house (and did you know red cedars lose about half their needles in the fall? I did not), and mulch the garden¹, and air out the garage, and scrub the bathrooms and kitchen, and vacuum the basement and stairs.

Then last night I shaved my head and shaved my face like I do every Sunday night and I woke up this morning feeling new born.

¹So I have this theoretical method of garden mulching inspired by a phrase I heard somewhere: “compost is what happens when you pile up organic material.” In September, I cleared the vegetable garden (which had become badly overgrown under the previous owners’ tenure) and have been fighting weeds there ever since. So instead of spending the winter fighting those weeds, I piled up all the pine needles and leaves from the yard, which cover the garden to a depth of about 8 inches. My theory is that some of those leaves will compost into the soil (which is pretty rich already), and the rest will a) discourage weeds and b) encourage earthworms. I can pull away the mulch in the spring and add it to the compost pile, which should be pretty mature by then anyway. We’ll see how that works out...