In my absence, I've had surgery and almost 6 months of physical therapy. While I do have use of my left arm once again, it's still weak and has a ways to go before I'll consider it up to my standards. The depressing thing is that I'm facing the same surgery for my right arm and shoulder, but until it gets to the point where I simply can't use it, I'm going to hold off on having more surgery right now.
Yesterday, I started tackling my sorely neglected yard. My yard man only cuts the grass. Everything else in the yard got put on the back burner until I could get to it. Saying that my flower beds were a mess is not an adequate description of the sorry state they were in when I started cleaning out the weeds yesterday that had over taken the beds. This time of year I always fight the same weed called Devil beggarticks. OMG! If you aren't familiar with this highly invasive weed, let me tell you that if you own dogs and have beggarticks are in your yard, your dogs will come inside the house coated with fine black needle-like seeds that cling to their fur. This time of year I always just about lose what little mind I have left pulling the damn stickers out of my dogs' fur every time they go outside.
So yesterday I spent all day (6am til about 5pm) outside pulling up three foot plus "devil" weeds by the roots in hopes that I can eliminate them before they go to seed. I pulled and pulled and then when I had my first pile stacked I started burning them. While I burned all the debris I had gathered yesterday and tended the fire, I snapped some pics of the smoke while it swirled and danced in the breeze.
