Woohoo! It's going to be in the 70s!

No, no, no, not the 1970s. Lord knows I had enough of the Bee Gees and disco the first time around.

It's going to be over 70-degrees today here in Marietta, and not a cloud in the sky.

I should take a walk. I'd love to take a bike ride but my balance isn't there yet to pull that off (fun chemo side-effect).

But I have to still clear the yard of dead stuff, and debris, left over from last season. But I'll be happy to do that. I'll be happy just to be outside.

Part of living in a city or a town is that there really is no place to go with all the yard waste. The borough gives out these big paper bags and collects yard waste every other week, but at a cost. We have to purchase stickers to place on the bags.

The bags are super tough and withstand the elements fairly well. But the bags are made to safely decompose back into the earth with all the contents too. At least it's very environmentally friendly.

My Dad always had a barrel which he burned trash in, everything that would burn. There was a brush pile too. With seven acres out in the country he could get away with that, and with seven acres he had a lot more branches and leaves and miscellaneous plants to deal with also.

I still have a brown thumb and kill about 50-percent of the plants that I plant. Everything that was here when we bought the house is thriving...well except the grass. The lawn recedes a little bit more every year.

As much as I would love a nice lawn, with all of our trees and all of the nice shade in our yard, I'm thinking about just conceding to nature and planning plantings in tune with the surroundings. You just can't fight Mother Nature.

From the dirt everything arises, and back to the dirt everything will eventually return.

I should get the hammock out today. If I get a little tired working in the yard, I can just take a little nap in the hammock, falling alseep watching the birds hit the feeder.

My Dad was doing well again yesterday, more of the same, according to my Mom. That, of course, is welcome and good news.

I'm feeling a little stronger myself today. The pain of the day is located below the right shoulder blade. After a day of yardwork I might earn a couple sore spots by tomorrow. But that's all part of growing older too, or so I'm told.