Posts Tagged ‘grass’
Quick Work
When you only have a limited amount of daylight in which to get your work done, you find a way to work quickly.
After seeing how nice the front yard looked after I mowed it to a close cut on Sunday, I desperately wanted to have the same result in the back. With the beautiful weather blessing us for another day, I made a point of rushing home from work and changing into grubby clothes.
There wasn’t much that needed to be done in preparation, so in no time I was on the back hill mowing all the leaves that had fallen. I made one pass around the perimeter and stopped to take a picture, hoping to get a “before” and “after” combination.
That image was lit with sunshine that would last barely another hour. Unsure whether I would have enough light to get an “after” shot, I picked the angle for this view and got down to business.
Since I was cutting very short, areas where the moles have wreaked havoc became much more glaring than when I leave it longer, but taken as a whole, the turf landscape looked rather noble by the time I was through.
Before snapping the second shot, I snuck a peek at the first image, because I’d already forgotten where I had stood to take it. For as little effort as I put toward aligning them precisely, I am tickled to have ended up with a shot that almost perfectly matched the earlier view.
The only thing missing was the sunshine, which was below the horizon by that point.
The hill is ready for becoming a sled run, in the off-chance we end up getting enough snow for that this winter, what with the “Godzilla-of-all-El-Niños” forecast to be moderating our temperatures in the months ahead.
If our current spell of good weather fortune is any indicator, we could be in for a short ski and igloo season this year.
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Accomplishment Burst
After a few days of not doing anything productive, it didn’t take much yesterday to make me feel like I’d salvaged the weekend by accomplishing something beyond just feeling better. It helped that the weather was especially nice, despite starting out rather brisk in the early morning.
By the time I made it out of the house, the chill had been replaced by an increasingly comfortable November breeze. My first goal was to get the truck battery charging. For some reason we have yet to discern, every other time Cyndie uses it, there’s not enough battery to turn it over when we next try.
Logic would indicate she is leaving something on, or maybe not closing a door tight. I don’t know. We have yet to find any clear evidence of what it is, and the fact that it doesn’t happen every time complicates the mystery.
While the truck charged, I headed down to the round pen to help Cyndie rake out and distribute the sand that was added. We got the project down to a manageable-sized remaining pile after spreading an even new depth throughout the whole circle.
On my way in for lunch, I paused at the garage to get the truck started and let it idle while winding up cords and putting away the charger. Then I checked and re-checked to make sure nothing was left on to put any drain on the battery. It better start when we test it again. Cyndie wasn’t anywhere near it when I did all this. 🙂
After lunch, I enlisted Cyndie’s help to tackle a chore I have neglected for over a year. This one means the most to me to have finally resolved.
Almost 2-years ago I had a little accident when trying to get the diesel tractor out of the shop garage to plow snow at a time when a storm had knocked out our power. The garage door did not stay up all the way and the roof of the tractor caught the weather-strip of the door and ripped it down. I saved the moderately bent up aluminum and rubber strip, but had no idea how it could go back on.
I neglected it for the entirety of last winter, studiously shoveling out all the snow that repeatedly blew under the door, instead of looking closer at the weather strip. Honestly, I had pretty much given up caring about the conspicuously absent finishing strip on the bottom of the huge door.
When I was building the last hay box in the barn stalls, I needed a board from my stash up in the rafters of the garage, and that meant I had to move the old weather strip out of the way. I decided to just take it down and lay it in front of the door, to make it easier to reattach than struggle to put back up on the rafters again.
The strategy worked! It took a little creative problem solving, but Cyndie and I figured out how to get the rubber to slide off the aluminum, so we could access the screws. With a few minor steps to add some screws in new locations, we got it reattached and were able to get the rubber back in place. We successfully recycled a part that would have otherwise been tossed.
No snow inside the garage this year!
With that success bolstering my confidence, I hopped on the lawn tractor and mowed the front yard. It struck me that I had been working in a short-sleeved T-shirt all day, and was mowing my lawn like a summer day, on the 8th of November. I’ve dealt with worse working conditions.
After that, I got the horses fed and cleaned up manure, before calling it a day and heading inside.
I think actions speak louder than words to reveal evidence that I am, indeed, feeling much better after several days of rest and Cyndie’s exceptional care.
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Greener Grass
There was a depression in the ground where the soil had settled along the area where, 2-years ago, we had a water line buried in a trench deep enough to get below the frost line. Since we have a never-ending supply of composting manure, I have often taken to using it as fill around the property, so it was only natural that I did so in that spot to level the ground just above the larger paddock.
Then I planted some grass seed.
Take a look at how green the grass is in the area I filled.
Next test will be to spread manure in the area of older grass to see if it responds similarly. It certainly has inspired me to look into spreading some in our hay-field. It’s why we are composting it, after all!
For now, it has just been a lot simpler to use it as fill. To spread it on the big field will require my borrowing a manure spreader from George and filling it with the loader bucket on my tractor. It’s not an impossible feat, but it does take things to another level.
Small loads by pitch fork in the ATV trailer just happens to be easier to pull off in a moments notice.
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Gorgeous Here
It is absolutely gorgeous here right now. Among the reasons we chose September for our wedding, the biggest one for me is, it is my favorite time of year. The humid heat of summer is breaking, and the air is crisp, with cool nights and warm days. When the sky is clear, the blueness is exquisite and it’s no longer so necessary to avoid the toasty sunshine. In fact, it practically begs a person to pause and soak it all in.
The challenge is, there is barely a moment for pause. The daylight grows short and preparation for winter weather requires new projects be added to the list of others already underway or planned. This year, I am feeling as though the growing grass didn’t get the memo about the arrival of September.
It is hard to get ready for winter when summer won’t back off and make room for fall.
I spent most of the afternoon mowing lawn yesterday, after filling that dang right front tire on the tractor with a green slime leak sealant.
Today I face the need to work the power trimmer to knock down the robust growth along edges and fence lines. It’s a chore that resonates of mid-summer responsibilities, with one improvement:
That crisp and gorgeous September air doesn’t cause it to be such a sweaty, sticky job.
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Mixed Signals
I am flabbergasted with the amount of grass growth on our property that is happening in September. It’s confusing my sense of time and place. Cyndie mowed last Saturday, and in less than a week, it already desperately needed to be cut again!
We have received regular rainfall that rivals a typical June, even as the days shorten, the temperature is dropping, and leaves are falling. I mowed yesterday and rolled through standing water in several spots. This time of year is usually dry and growth slows down. It didn’t seem like September at all to me as I started trying to knock down the crop of grass.
A couple of hours later, I was feeling the chill of a cool fall evening as the sun dropped low. It is mind-boggling to have these mixed signals informing my senses.
Good thing I’ve decided to work on learning to embrace change and celebrate aberrations.
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Bales Stacked
The day after the classic scramble to get a full field of hay baled and stacked under a roof has a disorienting feel to it. There is an obvious sense of relief in the reality that the shed is now stocked with provisions to feed our horses all winter. It’s like everything that needs to be done, is done.
But, it’s not.
It feels sort of comical to now have to mow the short grass of the lawn, a mere pittance of a harvest compared to that hay-field.
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Risky Behavior
I engaged in some risky behavior yesterday, and it was thoroughly pleasing. Regardless the likelihood of exposing myself to the dreaded oil of the poison ivy plant, I did some heavy trimming with our Stihl brush cutter. There is something incredibly satisfying about accomplishing the clean and trimmed look that this tool enables. All those edges that I can’t reach when mowing with our lawn tractor are so quickly dispatched.
Ian will know just what I’m talking about. It was when Cyndie and I were visiting him in Portugal that I discovered what can be accomplished with a brush cutter. There is immediate visual reward for the work and it creates a wonderfully clean landscape.
I needed to get after several areas, but I was primarily needing to clear our fence lines. When things grow tall enough to make contact with our electric fence, they start to put a load on it and that brings the voltage down. I didn’t have enough time to finish the whole chore, but at least I took care of the most visible portions first, so our place looks freshly maintained.
Still plenty left to do
Looks great when it’s done!
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There were only a few times when I thought I spotted what could possibly have been poison ivy, but I was shredding away and chose not to stop and try to confirm. Forging ahead, I just made a point to be very careful about what I touched while I worked. When I stopped and came in for lunch, I brushed off as best possible with my gloves, and then washed my arms and hands thoroughly with cold water.
I’ll know in a day or two if I was exposed.
After lunch, at the high point of sunshine for the day, I got up close and personal with one of our very visible known patches of poison ivy, and sprayed it with a new organic weed killer that I had ordered online. Just like the description I received from someone who recommended this brand, the leaves began to wilt within hours. So far, it appears to be working dramatically well.
I felt a bit embarrassed over how much pleasure I was getting out of seeing that the weed killer was working so well and the plants were suffering, but the risk of being embarrassed is something I am more than willing to accept.
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Quintessential Spring
The winter snowmelt was pretty easy to deal with this year, almost to the point of leaving things too dry for a short time. Then we got a few bouts of spring rain and our ground moisture began to show signs of life. Now we are in the classic battle of grass growing so fast that it is hard to keep up with the mowing, and occasional rain storms that hit on the days when it would have been nice to mow before the grass gets too long.
The horses are doing their part to keep things mowed (when we give them time on the grass) munching down the area we have fenced off for an arena.
Since we don’t do any jumping with our herd, we may end up leaving the area in its uneven, sloping natural state. We’ll see how it works for our purposes, once Cyndie actually starts holding some seminars.
The spot we picked for that arena is within the field we have designated for hay, and the narrow lanes that resulted beside it in that corner and along the drainage swale are now isolated from what will be cut and baled. We decided we may as well make it accessible for the horses to “mow.” I just need to put up a short length of fence to contain the horses in that alleyway and keep them from venturing out into the main hay-field.
When I finished mowing the grass yesterday, I spotted the horses already out in part of that space. Cyndie had put up a rudimentary barrier and given them access to one side. I still need to get a more secure version of a temporary fence there, though, as they will certainly challenge it in time, especially as the grass continues to grow more enticing out in the greater field.
In another classic sign of spring, I got a call from my hay supplier on Friday, checking in on how many bales we’d be interested in this year. He sounded a little crestfallen when I told him the much smaller number of bales we felt we would need. Between not wanting to be short and then getting higher yield than we expected from our own field last year, we got ourselves overstocked.
Other spring milestones include my being startled by the first garter snake of the year and the number of rabbits and raccoons visible romping again. Obviously, Delilah can’t find every rabbit’s nest when she is confined to being leashed the majority of time.
The temperatures have been bouncing classically between warm and cool, appropriately mixing at times to create thunderstorms, but so far, this year we are enjoying a perfect spring climate with few unsettling extremes. It is a nice change from the previous two years.
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Green Grass
Our grass is growing in leaps and bounds now, which is the time when we need to limit the hours of access for our horses. That accelerated growing is a too-high-sugar fuel for our Arabians, per the doctor’s orders. I had asked how I would know when we needed to pull the horses off the pasture, and our vet said that she uses how quickly the lawn needs mowing as a reference.
I mowed on Sunday, and there are places where it already looks like I didn’t even cut it. I don’t like to mow more than one time in a week, but when it is growing this fast, it needs mowing in 4 or 5 days. I think that using this as a reference for when to limit the horse’s pasture time will work pretty well.
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Well Fed
When the pendulum of oncoming spring swings away from the snow showers to sunny warmth of surprisingly summer-like days, we are presented with more to do than there are hours in a day. It is a blessing and a curse.
There are areas of our property where the grass is already growing like crazy, forcing me to need to mow the hill behind our house last Thursday before the predicted Friday rain/show showers. The ground is barely dry enough to support the tractor, but I delicately pulled it off. That precipitation turned out to be pretty much a bust and after yesterday’s warm sunshine the grass in others is now looking overdue for a cut.
The horses are in full mode of shedding their winter coats. They don’t wait around for us to take care of brushing them out, resorting to the tried and true method of mutually grooming each other. It is such fine cooperation to behold.
We had a visit from the vet yesterday to get the horses updated on their vaccines. We squeaked in a session of grooming prior to the vet’s arrival so everyone would be looking their best for the doc. Cyndie checked the weight of each horse with a tape measure which provides that translation and we were happy to learn they have all lost some weight since we last checked. The vet says they aren’t where we want them yet, so we have additional work to do. We are hoping the addition of more intentional exercise now that the winter is over will get us the rest of the way to their healthiest weight.
With her parting comment, the vet made a point about the weight of our animals when Cyndie brought Delilah from around the barn where she had been barking for attention. Dr. Lisa said she thought from the bark it sounded like she would be a smaller dog. She reached down to greet Delilah and after putting her hands into Delilah’s thick coat she blurted, “Oh, that isn’t all hair! You are overweight, too!”
Point taken.
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Relative Something 