Posts Tagged ‘hedge trimmer’
Ruthless Trimmer
I suspect gardeners with more skill and knowledge would cringe to witness my barbaric technique when wielding the ferocious blades of my hedge trimmer. I don’t so much as prune the ornamental growth and surrounding woods in and around the labyrinth as ruthlessly hack it back from impeding the pathway opening.
It had been too long since I last shaped the variety of plantings that decorate the walk through the labyrinth, and they showed it. I wasn’t going to get away with leaving a few odd trimmings on the ground as mulch because there was just too much of it.
Out came the rake and, eventually, even a pruning saw to remove some real branches before I could get around to pushing the mower along between the rock borders. The thick grass and dampness of humidity made the cut less than ideal as the mulched cuttings became a sticky mess, but the bottom line is, it has been mowed, which it wasn’t at the start of the day.
There still remain plenty of unsightly weeds and some tall grass in the nooks and corners around the rocks that the mower can’t reach. That will require some focused weed pulling or deft application of a string trimmer to bring down, but that will need to wait until I finish clearing the rest of the hay field and back pasture fence lines.
I am just as ruthless with the STIHL trimmer with the small gas engine when it comes to growth around the fences. It’s a great way to burn off any aggression if a person is so inclined. But that’s not me. I may trim ruthlessly, but I do it with love. Tough love, you could say!
.
.
Couldn’t Finish
With a threat of rain today and tomorrow, yesterday Cyndie hinted I should work on outdoor projects while the weather allowed. Fair enough. Since there are practically endless opportunities to trim back overgrowth along our trails and fence lines, I decided to start on the place that needed the biggest effort.
Using the electric string trimmer, I worked my way down the fence line. I always feel so good about how it looks when the fence wires are all free and clear from being swallowed by tall grass, weeds, and vines.
Next, I used the hedge trimmer to clean up the overhanging branches sticking out in the pathway.
When all the sliced up trimmings cover the ground, the pathway deserves to be raked clean. That becomes the finishing touch of a job well done and provides the ultimate visual reward for an end result.
It’s too bad I couldn’t finish in the time available. I left the rake down there in hopes one of us could, at the very least, make a quick sweep to clear the bulk of the debris the next time we are walking that trail.
We had to wrap up chores early yesterday for a trip to the Cities to celebrate some June birthdays with a dinner out at Ciao Bella in Bloomington with our kids, Cyndie’s mom, and her brother, Steve. What a fine batch of menu choices we were served by first-class staff.
Maybe I was extra hungry after skipping lunch to do that trimming, but every bite of my entrée and the several others I sampled tasted incredibly delicious. It’s as if they must have pushed past the limits of healthy eating by adding copious amounts of the good stuff, like butter, and salty seasonings. Even the starter loaves of fresh-baked bread tasted like the best bread I had eaten in a long time.
It made the packed parking lot and too loud ambiance worth overlooking. For a normal Tuesday night, the place was jumping! Good thing we had a reservation. Since we had picked up Cyndie’s mom, we also had a card allowing us to park in one of the handicap spots near the front door.
My meal was so good that I had no worries about not being able to finish that part of my day.
Maybe I’ll use that fuel to get out and do the unfinished trail raking between rain showers today.
.
.
Over Cooked
I worked outside in the humid heat yesterday for a little too long. My clothes were saturated with my sweat and my fingers were getting pruney even though I’d long ago ditched the gloves that were too soaked to be any good to me. I knew I was pushing the limits of my stamina but I wanted to finish some mowing with the push mower.
As I made my way to the shop garage to put away the mower, I could tell my muscle response was getting rather sluggish. It was past my dinner time and my body was running on fumes. Even my hearing and vision started to waver a bit as I cleaned up the deck of the mower before slowly making my way back to the house.
Before I could even peel off the soaked clothes that were clinging to my body, I succumbed to a powerful desire to lay down for a few minutes so no muscles needed to do any work at all. The cool tile floor of our sunroom fit the bill nicely. What a relief to immediately rest my entire body.
When I did try to move again, my muscles wanted to cramp. Cyndie brought me an iced electrolyte concoction to drink.
I was cooked. Overcooked. Cyndie offered to serve dinner, which I needed, but I was feeling nauseous and asked for a brief delay before eating. Getting out of my soaked clothes was going to feel good but I wasn’t looking forward to the effort it would require.
The reward for that effort came in the form of a shower. It was weird to enter the shower with hands already pruned and then have the pruning intensify. I wanted to make it short because I was too tired to stand for long but our shower has a spot to sit. My body chose to spend a few seconds seated under the spray whether my mind wanted to or not.
The air conditioning has been on in the house for a couple of days and that soon had me feeling colder than I wanted to be, which is weird after being too hot just 15 minutes earlier.
I started the day using our hedge trimmer to clean up the new growth on the natural green wall along our north loop trail. That tool is my new favorite, for sure. We now have two pathways tunneling beneath the branches of our big willow tree.
We got new blades for the little Stihl hand-trimming chain saw so I put one on and cut down some pine branches that were sagging into the pathway. What a huge difference a sharp chain makes.
The clouds have disrupted our viewing of the first supermoon of the month. Cyndie captured an interesting cloud formation on Wednesday that looked downright tornadic when I viewed it on the small screen of my phone upon receiving it from her in a text.
See what I mean?
Looks like we will be waiting for the blue moon at the end of the month for that eery glow illuminating views out our windows in the middle of the night. Cue the howling coyotes…
.
.
Long Days
Catching up on daily tasks after more than a week away is a small price to pay for the extended time I was able to relax at the lake, but that doesn’t mean catching up is easy. I’m not saying that it’s hard, but it does tend to require long days when I’m also attempting to watch daily Tour de France races in the morning.
Things will calm down when Cyndie gets home, but there will also then be the added responsibility of caring for Asher when they return. For now, I’m benefiting from our decision to keep him at the lake with Cyndie because none of my time needs to be assigned to his needs.
I successfully created a steaming pile from the week’s-worth of dumped manure our horse sitter collected.
It’s cooking perfectly after just one day of shaping the mess into a composting mound.
After mowing around the barn with the zero-turn lawn tractor, I took care of the labyrinth with the push mower. Then, I cleaned the waterer in the paddocks and fed the horses. Next came the exercise of moving hay bales from the shed into the barn.
Normally, that would have been enough to send me in for a shower, which would allow for dinner at a reasonable hour. Yesterday was not normal, so I got out the diesel tractor and cut the weeds in the paddock with the brush cutter. While I had that tractor out, I also knocked down the portion of growth along the inside of the hay field fence that gets missed when the hay gets cut and baled.
I have wanted that done since the field was cut almost a month ago. Even though that pushed my dinner an hour and a half later than I prefer, the accomplishment was worth it. It becomes one less thing I will need to do today.
That gives me time to watch more bike racing this morning! Yay!
One time-consuming task I am neglecting is berry picking.
I’m hoping they will survive on the vine for a few more days so Cyndie can tackle that project. When I finish cutting all the grass (weeds), I need to complete the trimming of fence lines and then use the hedge cutter to knock back the growth leaning in along our pathways.
While mowing the labyrinth, I noticed the hedge trimmer is needed on the outer circle path where the jungle-like growth from the woods is encroaching on the air space.
It’s no surprise that managing all the growth around here makes for long days. Good thing the place looks gorgeous when I’m all caught up on the mowing and trimming. That makes it all well worth it.
.
.
Hedge Trimming
I have talked for years about trimming the random growth along our north property line to turn it into a hedge fence but it wasn’t until yesterday that I finally made visually satisfying progress. The secret weapon that enabled me to reach this milestone is the Greenworks hedge trimmer that Cyndie’s mom gave me for Christmas last year. I have tested this impressive tool on multiple trees and bushes and on every occasion the performance has exceeded my expectations.
What a fabulous addition to my collection of yard and garden tools.
It chewed up everything I asked it to while hardly sipping from the energy of the battery. I couldn’t be more pleased about how well it worked. This beast is going to become a very handy resource for controlling the explosion of growth that happens at this time every year.
The northern border of our property is identified by a rusty old barbed wire fence. On the east half of that border, a short width of random growth separates us from a neighbor’s plowed field.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I’m really pleased to have my vision finally taking shape. It took me years to get to this point and it will take a few more years for the “wall” of growth to fill in, but I take yesterday’s progress as a successful proof of concept. It should be easier every year now that I’ve established the first cut.
Progress stalled in the middle of the afternoon when our co-op propane tank inspector arrived but that was perfectly timed with a passing rain shower so I would have needed to take a break from trimming anyway. We got two out-of-date regulators replaced at no cost. Safety first!
After that work was completed, I went back to the trimming and worked until dinnertime to get it done. I didn’t want to leave it unfinished because we are headed up to Princeton, MN today for an overnight visit with George and Anneliese. Asher will be staying home with a pet sitter.
From this point on, if any new growth dares to reach beyond the line of my new hedge wall, it will get snipped.
Hah! What do I mean, if? We all know the correct word is, “when.”
.
.
Relative Something 