The rest of yesterday went very well. I spent much of the afternoon planting 17 asparagus plants that I had picked up a couple of weeks ago at the hardware store. The other 9 crowns got planted this afternoon after the day had warmed up a little bit. I guess the usual way to plant asparagus is to dig an 8" deep trench and then space the plants every 18"-24" along it and fill it in 4" on top of the crowns. Then once they start to sprout you add another 2" of dirt and so on. Being a bit more lazy, and not wanting to dig 50 feet of trench by hand, I settled for digging an 8"-10" deep hole with the post hole digger and then draping the roots down into it until the crown was about 4"-6" below the surface. Filling in the hole with the dirt I removed, I packed it in around the plant and then called it good.  Now it's just a matter of a few weeks before I see if any of them actually survive. On a different note; the grape vines I planted the other day, and which seemed like they were doing really well, probably froze back a little bit last night. So now I'll have to wait and see if they will come out again or if they froze all the way back to the roots.
   Rima and I were invited over to some friends house last night for dinner. John and Liz live only a couple miles away so it was just a quick drive over there. We had a pleasant meal of baked fish with steamed asparagus and spinach. But the highlight though was the fresh blackberry/blueberry pie with ice cream we had for dessert. It was very yummy. Afterwards there was a couple of hours of delightful conversation before heading on back home.
   Rima's cold turned worse over night, so she spent most of the day sleeping on the couch in the sun. Not much there for me to do other than make her hot tea a couple times and make sure she had aspirin and enough blankets. I spent most of the afternoon cutting out enough blanks to build 4 new bird houses. The material I had is pretty iffy as far as being straight and even, but I think I can make it work given enough glue and nails. One thing is for sure, my new 12" compound miter saw works well.
   The other thing I did late this afternoon was to trim up a bunch more trees. I concentrated on an area in the lower pasture just south of the barn and took out a whole bunch of small black thorn trees that had sprouted there. Darn those things are prickly, I feel like I have a thumb full of splinters from them this evening. What I cleared up does look better however, but it is still only a small area on a very large piece of property. A little bit at a time I guess.
   Not sure what I'll do tomorrow. Some of it will depend on if Rima is still sick or not.... I'm hoping not, even though I do like having her at home sometimes. I'd like to get a few more trees cut down around the place, and then there are always more fence posts to install. But I think a lot will depend on how the weather is and if it is warm enough to actually be outside. Today was a little on the cool side, but if you stayed out of the wind and more in the sun it was alright to be out in it. I'm hoping it will be warmer tomorrow though.