Mid-week I suggested to our litter board's exec director that we reschedule the litter cleanup set for Saturday to Sunday instead, on account of expected rain. She agreed.  I don't take doing that lightly because it takes quite a lot of work to reschedule anything and let people know, and since I do all the social media promotions and the PR, this has fallen on me to do.

I had to create and post new Facebook and Instagram flyers, call the first selectman's office, call the state representative's office (both are still coming), revise the date on earthday.org, contact the local paper (which luckily is online so they can publish quickly), cancel the Facebook "event" and make a new one with the correct date, revised the greeting on my landline, which I'm using so people can call the number and listen to the pre-recording as to whether we're still on or not...and on and on.

Anyway, I think we're ready for the Sunday event.

Today was a very productive day, yardwork-wise. After I got back from the gym, I had lunch, relaxed a bit, then headed outside to see if I could clear some of the wineberry and multiflora rose and bittersweet that climbs into 4 beautiful, mature evergreens I have out back. If I don't stay on top of it, you can see how the trees slowly begin getting bald spots; eventually, they will die.

This shows the edge of the lawn in the back and the "brushy" area behind it. To the left, you see a red maple beginning to leaf out, and to its right are the 4 evergreens. Two of them are very large (larger than they look here because I took this photo from a 2nd floor window) and in great shape; one is smaller, probably becus deer browsed on the bark, damaging it, but it's still hanging in there; I think I'll put some  plastic fencing around the trunk. The 4th one, which you can't see, has lawn all its needles except for the top part; not sure what's happening there.

So I worked on that for about 2 hours, to the point of exhaustion. I was afraid I may not get another chance to do this this year, because once all the foliage is completely leafed out, it just gets too overgrown out there to take a risk with ticks. (As it was, the other day I caught 3 climbing on me after working near the road front doing something different...so they are definitely out.) I dress all in white so as to see them easier. Plus the poison ivy grows a good 10 inches high before it flops over on the ground and I have to avoid that, too.

I'm feeling really good about what I accomplished. Did I clear it all out? No, no way. But I did a lot more than I thought I would.  A lot of the bittersweet I could pull out by hand (with gloves), and I was also pulling lots of small burning bush and Japanese maple seedlings. I also see I have a problem with the doublefile viburnum, which tends to be invasive.

Little by little, I'm making progress. The most important thing is to attend to doing this sort of thing REGULARLY or your work will be reversed.

Earlier in the week I dug out the final (I hope) patch of lesser celandine I hadn't noticed before. That, too, was a job. I didn't want to compost it, even at the town transfer station, so I spread it out on a tarp on my sunny driveway to bake and dry out for a few days. Since it will rain tomorrow, I threw the now dead plants into a trash bag and will take to the dump.

I took a self-paced, online safe driving test with AAA last week. It costs $20, but will entitle me to 3 years' worth of discounts on my car insurance. I forget how much of a discount it is. The test was QUITE long with a lot of different modules, so it took all told probably 4 hours or so.

My knotweed group met with the chair of a river watershed group here in town and we agreed we'd work together to begin treating the knotweed that is growing IN the river. Very bad. Trout Unlimited will join in, too. The first thing we'll do is tape the knotweed stands up and down the river. We can't treat it til late summer/early fall, so as to minimize any impact on bees; honeybees LOVE knotweed. I was actually considering buying a pair of waders so i walk through dense brush with the others to access the river, but I may not do that. Ticks, again, is my concern. We'll invite the press to come, but I would also like to be there taking pictures so I can post on our group's Facebook page. So I don't know.

Oh! I received another donation to my fundraiser today. I think it was someone from this group, but I'm not positive becus the name isn't the name that's used here. If it was you, Ceejay, THANK YOU SO MUCH.

The weeks are so chockful of stuff going on. Tonight a friend is driving over, and then we'll do about a 12-minute walk from my house up to the town flagpole (in the middle of Main St) where we'll attend an outdoor candlight vigil for those who were wrongfully deported and detained in El Salvador.

I started a fundraiser on Swing Left to raise $$ to win back just 3 Democratic seats in the House to take back the House in the mid-term elections next year, which would go a long way in impeding the orange man's Project 2025 plans. Just 3 seats is all we need! (And not to lose any.)

So I made the first contribution; I was so happy to find someone I know in town made the next contribution, but otherwise, it's been quiet.  My friend who I'm seeing tonight is chair of the town's conservation commission, and I think I can also count on her for a donation (if she remembers). My goal is to raise $1,000 by the middle of next year, so I have some time, but still, I was wondering how to drum up more contributions as up til now, I had just about 85 or so Facebook friends.

I came up with the idea of expanding my Facebook network by friending more people with similar political views. It was easy to find them. So now I have well over 400 "friends" on Facebook, but so far that hasn't led to any more contributions. I also did 2 posts about why I'm doing this. If anyone is interested, I'll send you a link!

I really hate asking people for money. Back in the day, I used to participate in a lot of MS walkathons where I looked forward to the challenge of a 20-mile walk, yet disliked raising pledge money.

Today I had a handyman come out to repair one of my raised beds. He was very reasonably priced and came out right away. I would love to have him build a platform for my front-loading washer/dryer to save my back. Today was my first time using him. He was recently retired from other work and decided to do handyman stuff and couldn't believe how many single/divorced women have a need for this kind of thing. I know I certainly do.

I've been less successful getting other home projects going. One guy gave me a price to replace vinyl siding in 2 places where there are small holes, and I said great, let's do it, but twice now he failed to show up when he said he would. Becus it's a small job.

My go-to mason gave me a ridiculously high price for rebuilding some old stone stairs here and when I called him on it, he quickly dropped the price by nearly $2,000. This bothered me, and it's still a high price, so i had someone else come out but still waiting for his estimate. The large outfit (that means high overhead) quoted me a price that was even higher than my go-to mason, so that's not going to happen.

And still waiting for a price on front door replacement. I'll wait for Easter to pass, then will start pestering certain people again.

Tomorrow I'm taking my father to a German restaurant that's new to us. It's been 10 years since my mother passed, and traditional holiday celebrations like Easter have come to a grinding halt. It's crushing to me, but it's forced me to find new ways to mark the day. Some years I do nothing and have a pity party, other years a friend invites me over and in recent years, I've taken my father on barn tours and then dinner out. I think we've done 3 barn tours locally here, so I think we're done with that.

After Thanksgiving, Easter has always been my favorite holiday because there is not the pressure of gift-giving and it concides with spring. And what's not to love about bunnies and daffodils and eggs.

I planned to spend some time working in the yard today, and while I did, the time wasn't spent on what I hoped to do. That's because I did one more walk along the road front looking for invasive lesser celandine, which I found last year and dug up as thoroughly as I could. I didn't see any more on my first 2 "inspections," but that's becus it wasn't blooming and is otherwise very inconspicuous without its bright yellow flowers, which could be mistaken for dandelion if you didn't know better.

Anyway, I did find a good size patch of it in bloom near a culvert and wet spot where the skunk cabbage is coming up. It took some time, but I got out what I saw, but walking back I saw yet another largish clump of the stuff that wasn't yet in bloom. Sigh. I'll have to do that another time, but very soon, because once it does bloom, it becomes nearly invisible.

It all came from my neighbor across the street's house, jumping the road. She also has knotweed on her property, which I pointed out to her and she was very grateful I told her about it, but I'm not sure she's sprayed it yet. (Cutting it makes it grow more vigorously.)

So after successfully recruiting someone to serve as treasurer for my litter group, I found 2 more people who expressed interest in serving on our board. One of them will join us at our next cleanup in a week or so so that we can all meet him. The other one I need to talk to on the phone first, and then i will likely invite him to the cleanup for the same reason. Getting both these 2 people on the board would be a real accomplishment, especially since someone else who is currently on the board plans to resign in June.

Update: I would say at least 300 showed up tonight. Here are some pix:

That's my street to the right of the Meeting House (looks light a church).

This is the Episcopal church at the flag pole intersection.

So far, I've participated in 2 rallies and 3 protests. The rallies were different in that they were indoors and featured a series of very inspirational speakers making testimonials. One of my favorites was from a local church pastor. I would love to see more faith leaders speak out on what's going on.

At the last demonstration on Saturday, we got about 500 people to turn out in my little town of just 28,000, so that felt pretty good. And of course, there were much larger protests going on in major cities.

Here we can see be seen walking up Main Street to the flagpole while others are already returning.

My latest online fixation is watching short video clips of young, ungroomed men with long hair be transformed in a barber shop. It seems to be a thing. And once you watch one, a whole bunch more show up in your feed. It's amazing how much better someone can look with a simple haircut.

My other favorite is watching crowds of voters booing and shouting at Republican legislators at town hall meetings as they attempt to defend what 47 is doing.

I still have not looked at my brokerage balances becus I know it will make me anxious. However next month I'll be needing to take a distribution, so seeing my balances will be unavoidable. Luckily, I have about 3 years' worth of income sitting in a Vanguard settlement money market fund, so I won't lose additional money when I take the distribution.

Here are some handmade candies direct from Ukraine. I only tried one so far and it was very good.

Spring has sprung here in the Northeast but the temp are more like March.