Relative Something

*this* John W. Hays' take on things and experiences

Archive for May 1st, 2025

Rough Start

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The day dawned full of promise yesterday, and I had a long list of things I wanted to accomplish. The biggest thing I ended up accomplishing was overcoming a series of frustrations in the morning that threatened to derail my whole day. It was one of those times when an attempt to knock off a few easy tasks backfires because one thing after another goes badly until it seems like each failure is feeding off the one before it.

The head of a screw breaking off is annoying but the steel tines of a bedding fork snapping at the handle was uncalled for.

I switched to something with less risk of failure. Beyond shredding the flesh of my forearms on tangles of bramble, the hauling away of the piles of vines we have been extracting the last few weeks was the beginning of a trend of success for me. In addition to the vines, while we were in that mode of hauling, we accomplished a couple more loads of piles of branches that litter our woods.

Eventually, it became time to crank up the riding mower to conquer some of the lawn grass that has been doubling in height by the day lately. We won’t be participating in any no-mow-May campaigns this year. My mowing started in April.

Cyndie thought the mowing tracks in the grass were worth a picture.

I was pleased with my ability to minimize muddy skidding in wet areas on my first time operating the zero-turn in many months.

Today, I hope to tackle the labyrinth with the push mower in preparation for World Labyrinth Day on Saturday. It will depend on the 50% chance of rain being forecast. Timing is everything. If I had mowed too many days before the event, the grass is growing so fast this time of year that it would be longer than we want.

The grass in the pastures is already getting beyond the rate of the horses’ grazing, and they are spending most of their time out there. Granted, I spotted a fair amount of napping going on on the high slope of the hay field, so not all their time out there is being spent gobbling grass blades.

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Written by johnwhays

May 1, 2025 at 6:00 am