(us, health, yard, quaker notes,work)

Christine has apparent gastroenteritis with her fever at 100°F last we checked.

I have now worked in the yard! Sunday afternoon and  -- i took time off -- today. The eastern part of the yard, including the mossy glade is raked, letting the moss and the Dichanthelium species native grass get plenty of light and air as we go through this coming week  and unusually warm weather. I've lots of leaves piled in an area that became too much stilt grass and i intend to nuke from orbit -- i mean flame weed-- when the stilt grass begins sprouting. I'll eventually move these leaves back to where we had many trees cut down. Thickening the mulch will be useful as i suspect stilt grass seeds got spread around whit the work.

Today i cut down autumn olive and some sapling sweet gums. I was thinking we'd have our tree guy come cut down three more large-ish sweet gums, but i think we can wait a few years: i think they are short enough that the pines and tulip poplars will be more of a shade issue -- and those stay,

While i was out, i selected a top of a sweet gum to bring inside and decorate with LED fairy lights. Thanks for the encouragement, tamena https://tamena.dreamwidth.org/! It's mesmerizing to watch the lights change colors in waves . Without knowing, i seem to have gotten the right number of lights per branch to have a single color segment on each branch. I'd not been precise, but i decided the shorter branches should have denser lights, which ended up with each branch having a similar number of bulbs. I don't know how i realized that would look  more balanced, but it does.

One  colleague in Ohio was exposed to COVID this weekend, another colleague in Sheffield England has tested positive. It's his third case?   I suppose Christine could have COVID, too, so we'll probably test her tomorrow.

Retreat planning is also taking mental cycles.

I'd hoped that work would settle with Friday's deadline, but the  new director is now all about taking the plan and pulling it apart and reassembling a couple different ways. Fiddlesticks.