Redbud

One of the casualties of this Backyard Makeover project is that I tend to exhibit my father's traits when undertaking a project of this magnitude: go on full throttle until something is done, over-exert myself and then spend days recovering from it all.

Perhaps it was the adrenaline of the project itself that kept me running all weekend despite pretty fair warning signs that all was not well with my body. Whatever the case, while I was hurting yesterday, nothing comes close to the pain I've experienced this lovely Monday.

If I may vent...

Every single step I take hurts. My legs are aching, my back is killing me, the palms of my hands and heels of my feet are sore, and my poor shoulders are wishing they didn't belong to me anymore.

I'm miserable.

I've managed to pop nearly every available painkiller in this house: Aleve, Advil, Tylenol. Nothing has so much as dulled the pain. I'm sort of longing for the early days of Dad's health problems when he had a cabinet full of narcotics.

Which is why earlier I approached him with an idea. I'll simply insert a tube into his abdomen and siphen off some morphine from out of his pump.

Brilliant, right?

Yeah. He was less than thrilled with the thought.

So until I score something on the street (kidding) (kind of) I'm at a bit of an impasse with the retreat/sanctuary. Or at least until I finish buying what I need at Garden Ridge tomorrow and decide where I want everything.

If you check out my Flickr Photostream you can see some initial work on the retreat thing. Trust that it is bigger than appears in the photos and that no plant or birdfeeder in those pictures is where it will end up...probably.

In the meantime here is a picture of what probably did me in this weekend.

You see, my favorite tree in the whole world is a Redbud that resides in the frontyard of my childhood home. For years I've told my parents that their current house is simply bare without a Redbud.

And for years my father has reminded me how much he hates to mow around trees. In a fit of stupidity yesterday I treked off into the woods near my house with a couple of willing 13 year olds to find (and dig up ourselves) a Redbud tree.

Turns out, when your daughter arrives home with a Redbud she dug up herself you kind of have no choice but to get over your problem with mowing around trees and plant the damn thing.