Rose-i-cide, Porch Picnic, Shaking Off Lethargy

The day started on a downer.  You would think I would learn my lesson—if I wake up at 8:30, feeling good, I should get up and start the day, rather than sleep another hour, but I repeatedly prove that I cannot learn this lesson.  So it was today: I slept until about 9:30 and woke up feeling somewhat less enthused about life.  Rather than immediately attack the pile of papers on my desk that were waiting to be graded, I decided to spend my coffee hour watching Frank Zappa tear Republicans apart—a joy, to be sure, but not enough to shake off an entire winter's lethargy.  I decided to take a walk and think about how bored of myself I had become.  This school bus parked outside of the tire shop was the first thing to cheer me today.  

One doesn't normally think of school buses bringing cheer or needing new tires.  I kept on walking and realized that perhaps some of the feeling I associated with being depressed and bored with myself was in fact hunger.  I'd been complaining about low energy last night, and one sure way to charge up is to eat.  I browned some leftover kielbasa, added some water to the lentils I'd made for lentil tacos, combined the two of them and vio la! soup. Butter up some bread and take it onto the side porch for a porch picnic.  This food went some distance in restoring me.

Porch picnic view was a typical March view.  The sun comes and goes and the birds make noise.  Especially when it looks like rain.  

I've been mulling over the end of this blog, thinking that perhaps it has run its course.  Naturally, the people that I tell this to encourage me not to do that.  Perhaps I should just wait for spring to do its work on me.  Me and Oilchanges, FYI, are the same thing.  We slump at the same time and we eat the same shit.  I look at those houses (above) every day.  It's easy to forget how beautiful they are.  It's easy to forget how fortunate I am to sit on my side porch with a bowl of lentil soup, a glass of water, and some buttered bread.  Working from home tends to trap me indoors during the winter and make me physically weak, but I suppose there are worse things, though drudgery and boredom, when you're in deep with them, can be very resistant to affording one a view of a future.  What the heck am I doing in this life? is a question I ask myself all the time, especially in late winter.  Good thing for garden expansion plans... 

There used to be some brambly rose bushes with crappy flowers, unsuitable for cutting and bringing inside, but now there are none.  They grew along the side of the porch, along the red lattice work.  They were a nuisance, sprawling their brambles all over the joint, looking scraggly and not doing much for anyone.  All they did was require regular pruning.  High maintenance, no reward.  I got the approval to get rid of them, and let me tell you that it felt great to rip them out and, with long-handled pruning shears, lop them into bits small enough to stuff into the trash can.  I felt like one of Tony Soprano's boys doing some dirty work.  Big sprawling creatures must be broken down before being shoved into trash cans.  In this case, though, it was just some crappy bushes with no value to anyone whatsoever.  Let the garden expansion begin.  The raised bed on the left-hand side of the photo will extend all the way across the frame and abut the porch soon enough.  

It's almost three o'clock, and though I have managed to do some of my grading, there is plenty more to do.  I wish there was a bumper sticker that said, I would rather be exterminating a shrub.  I would buy it.  Finally, a shout out to Francesca and Toast.  You ladies are great.