Posts Tagged ‘mowing’
Comes Around
Last year, when I was home full-time, I often looked forward to the moment when Cyndie would arrive home from work and cruise up the driveway where she could see the results of my day’s effort on some project or another. Of course, this only worked if she made it home before dark, which is a tough thing to do during the period when the sun sets before 5:00 in the afternoon.
Sadly, more often than not, I would need to prompt for some feedback, and the response tended to reveal that she hadn’t noticed a thing. After the long commute, just reaching the driveway safely becomes the primary milestone of note, which tends to swamp the senses and blur specific details that may have been noteworthy.
Yesterday, after I pulled up the driveway, I did see the horses grazing in the hay-field nearby, but after that, pretty much a blur. I found Delilah waiting on the other side of the door, as I walked into the house, but no Cyndie. After a wonderfully happy greeting from our dog, I watched her move to the doors beside the fireplace which provide a view beyond our deck to the back yard hill that slopes down to the labyrinth garden.
With no leaves on the trees, it was easy to spot Cyndie pushing the reel mower on the path of the labyrinth. Delilah anxiously followed her master’s every move in the distance. That dog really bonds with the person who is home with her all day.
When Cyndie eventually made her way back up to the house, she promptly asked me how the place looked when I pulled in.
Busted.
I hadn’t noticed all the work she had labored to accomplish on her own while I was away. I felt awful to have missed it, and I gained a new appreciation for what it was like for her last year, before our roles became reversed.
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More Mowing
Does it look like the labyrinth was in need of being mowed?
I can assure you, it definitely needed it. I worked long and hard to conquer the task, but remained cool and comfortable the whole time in the September sunshine.
I looked up at the world around me when I finished and discovered that the leaves of some of our trees had changed color in just the span of the day.
I expect it will take a couple of frosty nights to finally get the grass to take a break for the season, but trees have begun their shutdown. The autumnal equinox is just days away.
I’m lovin’ it.
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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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Road Trip
We’ll be hitting the road today for a jaunt north in Minnesota to spend the weekend at the cabin of our friends, Barb & Mike. I raced home from work yesterday, changed clothes in a blink, and hopped on the lawn tractor to mow grass in hopes of getting it done before dark, so I wouldn’t have any pressing chores delaying our departure today.
I was also hoping to have it all cut before the predicted rain arrived. It can be so frustrating to have it rain on the one day I set aside for mowing, compared to the good feeling of getting it done a day earlier to beat the precipitation.
My hopes were fulfilled by some speedy maneuvering, which I was able to achieve because, for once this summer, I was mowing at less than a full week’s interval, and the growth has finally slowed down a bit. I was able to get it all done.
Our freedom to get away this weekend came about after Cyndie checked with one of our trusty property/animal sitters about the possibility of covering for us over Labor Day weekend, so we could go to Cyndie’s family lake place in Hayward. When the holiday weekend didn’t work, McKenna offered her services for this weekend as an alternative.
We can make that work! Since this weekend the Hayward beds are all filled during Cyndie’s parents’ golf weekend with friends, we inquired with Barb & Mike and hatched a plan. One of the enticing things about our plan is that involves no plan at all. We are going to relax and enjoy whatever strikes our fancy in the moment.
With luck, maybe one of those moments will involve a nap in a hammock among tall trees overlooking a lake. That, and some good food shared among fine friends. More than enough motivation for the few extra hours we will spend driving, to get us there and back.
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Fabulous Time
What is the deal? Is my camera broken or something? I haven’t taken any pictures for two days, so I can offer no visual proof that our friends, the Morales family, have arrived, or that we have already had so much fun being with them again that little else is receiving our attention.
The one exception turns out to be my stealing any spare second to get after the never-ending task of mowing or trimming grass. I now have just one section of fence left to be mowed before having that whole job complete. I’m planning to sneak that in early this morning before packing up to head to the lake for a couple of days.
We decided to drive two of our cars up there to give me the option of returning earlier than others on Friday to enable me to —can you imagine this?— mow all the lawn grass in preparation for the big knock down, drag out shebang we have scheduled for Saturday night.
Some years the grass growth slows around here in late July and August so I don’t have to mow as frequently, but this year I’m finding that it looks like I need to mow again after just a couple of days. When I wait a whole week, enough grass clippings are created to make me think I should have George bring over his baler.
We are having a fabulous time with our precious friends. Despite their late arrival on Monday night, which had us getting to bed around 3:00 in the morning yesterday, we made it to Hudson in the afternoon for a brief moment of shopping, and a fine patio lunch overlooking the St. Croix river at Pier Five Hundred restaurant.
Later, after a stint of grass trimming, both along the fence and in the labyrinth, George and Rachel Walker joined us for dinner. Marco graciously accepted Cyndie’s invitation to grill steaks, which turned out perfectly delicious. Poor Delilah doesn’t have a clue what happened to her usual sleeping routine the last two nights, as we lingered around the table after the meal, sharing stories and laughter well-past her usual bedtime.
Today, we leave her behind to be cared for by friends for a couple days while we will all be visiting with Cyndie’s parents up at the lake place in Hayward. With any luck, I’ll remember to take a few pictures of the frivolity expected to ensue.
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Tractor Time
Yesterday I put in a double shift, first working the day-job and then immediately after getting home, hopping on the tractor to knock down weeds in our north pasture with the brush cutter. No rest for the weary.
Fortunately, time on the tractor can be meditative, especially if I am on a task that doesn’t require my full attention. Unfortunately, yesterday’s task was not one of those times. The fence around the north pasture is a temporary one of t-posts with webbed poly-tape fencing strung between them. It is not something I want to touch with the tractor or mower.
I made contact twice. Oops. Luckily, only minor, repairable damage. The second time, though, I needed to stop and climb down to pull the post out of the way so I could get moving again, without doing further damage.
In addition to needing to be careful of the fence, I also had to navigate a significant slope next to the driveway, as well as many pine trees throughout the field.
I honestly didn’t get much in the way of meditating done during yesterday’s tractor time. At least the field looks much better now without all the giant weed growth sprouting every which way.
I took Delilah for a walk in the field after I was done and in no time she located a small critter that had lost its hiding place. Speaking of hiding places, there were a couple of flattened spots that looked like a few deer had been napping near the middle of the field. With how tall the grass and weeds had grown, I’m sure the deer were well hidden while they were doing some meditations of their own.
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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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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 