Any healing my ankle has done over the past few weeks was probably all shot out the window today after I spent from 7:30 AM until 2 PM on my feet (properly booted) doing things I wanted to do but probably shouldn’t have overdone, mostly grocery shopping and food prep for the week, but also a little work in the garden. Another blazing hot day, so I wanted to get the shopping and garden things done in the morning. Even without the bum ankle my feet would be aching, as they are now. Well, at least we have green drinks for the week, and Hubby has a week’s worth of kale salad—stuffed full of other good vegies—and the freezer is full of cookies (the Double Tree Hotel’s recipe). And now I can justify lying on the couch on the porch for the rest of the day.

In the garden I tried a new homemade herbicide, enviro friendly, that’s basically 1 gallon of industrial strength vinegar (45%), 1 cup of salt, and 1 tablespoon of dishwashing liquid. You spray it on the leaves of plants you don’t want and wait for the sun to come and fry them. Mission accomplished, except that we had some collateral damage to a few flowers—not sure how that happened—and a couple of zucchini plants Hubby has grown from seed and planted behind the pond instead of in the garden beds (oops). The cookies made up for it, and we have zukes elsewhere. That poison ivy sure is tough though.

Talked to one of my Montana besties on the phone this afternoon, and then my nephew with the recording engineering degree tried to walk his old aunty through how to slap together some tracks using Cakewalk via video conference. I will need subsequent lessons and a lot of patience to master this skill. Thankfully, he’s an outstanding and patient teacher.

Enjoyed a tapas supper on the porch while Hubby snoozed on the porch couch. That couch ought to come with a warning: All who lie here are subject to falling asleep. He deserved a good nap after limping around the garden all day doing whatever it is he does out there. It is National Gardening Exercise Day, after all.

Later I took some pictures from around the garden and the new smoothed-out yard and basement steps. It must be a sign of aging when one can get excited about having outside basement steps and a larger driveway. Amazon delivered this cool ice pack, which both of us will benefit from once it’s done a spell in the freezer. Going to wrap up the evening with the Washington Post and maybe an episode of McLeod’s Daughters.