July 26, 2018

A day which was the perfection of summer. I had iced coffee at the café, but then decided to give the rest over to weeding. It was probably the day upon which I did the most weeding in my life– though very little looks “done,” since there was so much to do. Got the convolvulus off the trees outside the fence, ripped up acres of russet-headed grass. Thinned the myriads of crabgrass. Went hither and thither uprooting the by now pretty large pokeweeds, so that they wouldn’t mature and reseed. Was aided in this by ground softened by yesterday’s rain. Uncovered rose-of-Sharon, sunflowers, fruit trees, sage that I had planted outside the fence. Someone cuts the tops off the sunflowers outside the fence as they mature. People can be very bold, unless it was very precise bears.  Attacked layers of ivy and honeysuckle just inside the fence, adding to my terrace of blocks. I can tote maybe two blocks a day. Left a volunteer redbud for the future. Found a tiny tiny seedling of the lost great pine, left it for the distant future. Went to the corner of the front garden and ripped out maybe a hundred pounds of vines that had wound themselves up into the hollies. My fanatic writing binge allowed all this to happen. Everything still looks weedy, but with fewer layers. I have to wait for the inspectors tomorrow, so maybe we’ll have another go. Most anxious to observe I’m no more tired than I am on any other day. Do I coddle myself? Can this exhaustion be muscled past, like many another thing? Exultant at my level of not being exhausted.

The waitress at the airport café in Akron had taken her kids out of Ellet because it was, she said, gang-ridden. Times do change. We amused ourselves by talking about our favorite places in Akron-that-was.  We both loved the Diamond Grill.

The apartments ripped out their bamboo, so now my bamboo provides but a thin screen between my windows and theirs.