Feet hurt

[Eric Muehlbauer]

Your feet are too soft! Go barefoot all the time........when I'm out on Long Island, I only wear shoes when I have to go into town. I sometimes go days without ever wearing anything on my feet. Even in the city, no shoes are worn within the vicinity of my home. Nothing bothers my feet...(but for digging a deep hole in hard dirt, I'd recommend boots.....actually, I've been known to hack a hole using a trowel rather than have to put something on my feet.....) Take care, Eric

 

[SlipperFan]

I agree with Eric. Even tennis shoes are not enough support for feet digging holes.

 

[TheLorax]

I'm definitely done with flip flops until we go on vacation somewhere warm. They're fine for a beach and knocking around but I should have never been wearing them to work on the yard. They were kinda hard pushing down on the shovel and jumping down anyway. The benefits of having cool toes and being able to hose down my feet just aren't there for me any more. I do have some steel toed work boots that I use when I go work at the forest preserve and those are considerably easier to use when digging anything. The gym shoes I have should be fine for around here with what I've got left to do. I lost count of how many holes I dug today. If it was still light out, I'd run back out and count but I think I've got less than 15 to go plus that water garden thingie.

Barefoot is not an option. I had to get hard soled flip flops because of the debris from several Hawthorn trees around here. Those things have horrible thorns that were going straight through the soles of the soft flip flops. It was a real pain in the rear having to stop what I was doing to extract those thorns on a regular basis. Darn things were going right through the old flip flops and partially into my feet.

 

[rdlsreno]

For your dry cracked skin on your feet try Bert's Bees Hand Salve,

Ramon

 

[TheLorax]

Thank you Ramon. I'll add that to the Dragon's Blood if the two products I picked up don't work for me. Hopefully ditching the flip flops will solve most of my problems and the creams and salves will take over until my feet heal.

 

[dave b]

Ah yes...the ancient, wiseman Confucius once wrote about this...

Man who wear flip-flop to dig holes in dirt all day, then spend evening on Google figuring out why that not good idea, need to Google how to safely dig hole in backyard first.

Yes, even Confucius was aware of the divine power of Google.

 

[Candace]

See how everyone's all worried about your poor tootsies?

 

[TheLorax]

I feeeeeel the love! :smitten:

 

[Eric Muehlbauer]

Hawthorne trees? No problem...I still step on the debris from an enormous Pyracantha (1-1.5" thorns...) I had removed years ago...still have another one I despise and want removed (but the berries are great food for birds in the winter), at my Queens home. The thorns never stopped me...I pull one out every now and then, no damage though...feet can get really tough! Take care, Eric

 

[TheLorax]

Hawthorn trees may not be a problem for you but they're a problem for me. I'm not into masochism. The Hawthorns here are indigenous and are a great source of food for migrating birds in the fall. They stay. I'm not wearing flip flops any more though so it's moot at this point.

If you are at all interested in removing your remaining Pyracantha, I would be able to give you a list of thornless native trees to consider. You might find them equally attractive and they'd all be capable of providing berries for your birds that were high in lipids. End result would probably be more species of birds visiting your property once the replacement trees began fruiting. I may know zip nadda nothing about orchids but I've worked with eastern woodies for a while now.

 

[Eric Muehlbauer]

Thanks...I'm pretty familiar with native trees...the Pyracantha came with my property. Would never have planted it myself, that's for sure. The birds have plenty to eat...lots of wild cherries growing everywhere in my neighborhood...an the hideous hackberries that grow in my neighbor's property, covered by non-native Asian bittersweet...Take care, Eric

 

[TheLorax]

I inherited some extremely undesirable plants when we bought our property too. Slowly but surely I remove them and replace them but as you know, it doesn't happen overnight.

 

[Marco]

Your feet are too soft! Go barefoot all the time........when I'm out on Long Island

Eric turns into a hobbit when he goes into long island.

 

[TheLorax]

Should have mentioned the feet situation. I think the triple antibiotic helped take away a lot of the pain that first night. There was this little cheese grater looking file I bought that really helped reduce the callouses after I used goldenrose's goop for the day. That night I used Eric's goop. I repeated the process starting with soaking them again the next day and using all the goops then used the file again. I also bought this product called Bag Balm. Never did use it on my feet but it worked great on my hands. I also got a reprieve from digging. I got help with all of my holes. Our oldest came home for the weekend with his friend and the two young men finished up all of my holes plus another ten or so that I added to my list and they also finished off that biggie for the acaule. They even tossed a layer of gravel under that form for me and then leveled it backfilling with sand. They did in several hours what it would have taken me three days to do. And it rained all day on and off so they had to have been cold and damp. I'm in good shape now (duct tape free) and am not walking around on the balls of my feet like a cripple. Thank you all, everything worked.

 

[goldenrose]

Hip HIP HOORAY!

 

[Grandma M]

Sounds like you son and his friends were a godsend, :viking: and worked like vikings.

I'm happy for you and glad that your feet are healing. Sore feet.....a bummer.

Marilyn

 

[TheLorax]

Yes, I'm very happy. Either one or both of them stop in pretty much every weekend but I don't expect them to work when they've got jobs and their own apartment to keep up. I'm still pleased I was bailed out. I didn't even have to whine or guilt them into digging

 

[Eric Muehlbauer]

Marco- how did you know I have hair on my feet? Eric

 

[TheLorax]

Ahh, flip flop free and doing great. goldenrose even inspected the damage. I don't think I will ever wear flip flops again to do any outside work. The difference in just a few weeks of not wearing them is remarkable. Wearing flip flops the whole summer wasn't one of my brightest moves. When one is dumb, one pays.

Hey Eric, I know a great way to get rid of the hair on your feet

 

[goldenrose]

The flip flops might be find for casual, lounging around, just not for the excavating you were doing!