A Grueling Two-Week Adventure

It’s a brilliant sunny morning, the horses are all where they belong and I’m on the couch this morning instead of my desk to write. My body aches. For the last two weeks, John and I have been waging war on the thistle at Serenity Ranch.

Last year when John told me he saw musk thistle I was surprised thinking it wouldn’t be a problem here. I was wrong. Before we knew it, they and the bull thistle were all over. When I closed/opened one of the gates I had to be careful not to get my fingers in them.

Let’s Get the Thistle Before it Takes Over

I had seen some musk thistle in the draw next to the driveway and wanted to get it out before it went to seed. They propagate quickly. I went down last Sunday late afternoon thinking I’d dig a few up and put them in a bag. What I found were huge. Not even one would fit into the bag without cutting it up.

So, I clipped the gorgeous flowers off them, dug them up, and let them sit in a pile until I had help to bag them. John came on Monday, and we drove down to get them. He saw some I hadn’t seen the day before. So, we went after them. We didn’t have a great way to get them into the bags, so we put them in the back of his pickup.

Then he came Tuesday, and we bagged up what was in his pickup. I needed something that wasn’t full of thistles to drive to Lawrence and Overland Park on Wednesday. We were efficient at that it only took about 2 hours. In those three days, we had eight bags of thistles.

During the week I had seen the bull thistles start to grow under the corral fence. So, I had John come back up to dig and bag them yesterday (Sunday). I thought we had it all figured out. John thought we should get some heavier bags, so we headed into town. On the way, we saw some bull thistle and John wanted to get them while we knew where they were. So, we drove up the half-mile driveway stopping to dig thistles and throwing them into the back of his pickup. Not what I had in mind.

When we got back to the barn, we put those thistles in bags – I think that was three. Then we headed out to dig and bag the ones around the corral. It had rained the last two nights, so the ground was soft, and they were easy to dig. We were worn out after three bags, but we still had some thistles that had been dug so we filled another. We came back to the house and unloaded the tools out of the pickup. Loaded the bags of thistles into the pickup. Put Ace and Patty out for the night. Then went to the house to fix dinner.

Sometimes Exhaustion Feels Good

Needless to say, I’m exhausted. It’s a good exhaustion though. A huge feeling of accomplishment. This is all part of the adventure.

I remember Mike wondering how I could be so tired when I wasn’t doing physical work like he was. I was mentally drained not physically tired. Both can be equally exhausting. The physical can be easier to recover from if it doesn’t come along with the mental.

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Working In A Coal Mine.

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Onward!