Saturday, March 30, 2024

 Saturday, March 30, 2024

   Today is my grandnephew's fifth birthday. Happy Birthday, Sam! His mom, my niece Karin, watched Mike's funeral on live feed while in labor. I hope it distracted her.

   I noticed some green coming up in the area where I had seven large Ficus trees extracted and 5 inches of mulch applied. I must wait seven or eight months for the mulch to do its thing and suffocate the remaining roots. Darby warned me that 'weeds' would sprout as the mulch cooled down. They were here. I went out to check.

   These were not ordinary weeds. These growths were new Ficus trees coming up. I tried pulling them out by the roots. Some seemed to come out, but I'm not confident I got all the roots. Some of the shoots were already too deep to pull out. I got tools to help me dig them up. No luck! The mulch is hard to dig into. I tried the boiling water trick, pouring eight to ten carafes of boiling water on the weeds.

   As I poured water on the lower edge of this area. I looked over the edge and saw four-foot Ficus trees coming up. I put out all this money, and the damn trees are busy making sure they survive.

    I still don't have access to  older versions of my Microsoft files. I lost 49 days of work. This isn't great, but it's not a tragedy. I'm thinking of people who worked on a novel or a thesis. Now, that's a tragedy! I checked if  Microsoft had reinstated the old versions of the files I lost. I did check on 'version history.' It is all gone. The only version that is available for all dates is the 'current version' for all the previous dates. Ah, that was yesterday. Today, there are no previous versions listed.

   I met with third-grade M today with plans to continue working on comprehension using Stuart Little. She was in a terrible mood, sullen, but I saw pain behind it. I read Stuart Little to her now. Her oral reading is fantastic. We don't have to do that anymore. She gets as much of that in as she needs in school. Her problem is with comprehension- or even more so, being able to clearly express her thoughts. When I ask additional questions, she always knows the answer. Why didn't she include those facts in her answer?  

   I asked her if she could visualize what I had just read. She said, "NO!" so abruptly I was left speechless. I sat in silence for several minutes, just praying. What was going on here? I told her I thought she looked sad. I might not be able to do anything to change things, but I could listen. I sat in more silence. Sometimes, that's all you can do.  

   At some point, I could continue. I read and interpreted what I read. Then, M pitched in. By the end of the session, she had pulled out of her slump literally as well as figuratively. Her analysis of what was going on in the story was spot on.