Saturday, May 21, 2005, 21:42
Things are Looking Up (?)
We finally got the lawn mowed Friday. I still can't quite believe it. Only a few sprinkles of rain in the morning, and although it was cloudy until 4 p.m., the rain stayed away for a few hours. At 3 p.m. I got out the push mower and started mowing down by the garden again and in back of the barn. On Monday, it took me one whole hour to mow that part. Yesterday, I did it in 25 minutes. I decided I had to mow in back of the barn again because in only a couple days, the grass had grown enough that it needed mowing again.
At 4 p.m., Randy started the other push mower, and by 7:30 p.m., we were finished mowing *and* trimming with the weed whacker.
No matter how we divide it up -- two push mowers going -- one push mower going -- one push mower and the riding mower going -- mowing the lawn takes about 6 hours of work all together. It was hard mowing, too. Long, thick grass lush enough to plug the mowers from time to time. I certainly got a workout pushing the mower.
Then of course, today (Saturday) I had to get out the rake and rake part of the lawn. Whenever I rake the lawn, my horse "talks" to me the whole time, standing by the fence, anxiously watching my every move, nickering-nickering-nickering. That's because he thinks I should be raking the clippings in his direction and shoving them under the fence. If the grass clippings have dried sufficiently, he gets some of them to eat. And today, he was lucky because the clippings were fairly dry. He didn't get all of the clippings, by any means. I would rather he didn't make himself sick on grass clippings.
While I raked the lawn, since I was facing in that direction, anyway, I contemplated the "old pasture" which runs along the road. It's only a couple of acres, but I keep thinking that one of these years we should fence it in again and then get some beef calves to raise. We took the fence out 10 years, so the fencing itself would be quite a job. Maybe someday we will find ourselves bored and without a thing to do, and then we'll get at fencing.
Randy also managed to till the garden this afternoon. Our old tiller finally "gave up the ghost." For years, Randy has been saying that *if* he couldn't get it started, that was it for the ancient tiller (it looked like it was probably 40 years old, or so). This year it finally happened, and the tiller refused to start. So, we borrowed my brother's tiller.
My lilacs are starting to bloom, too. For quite a while, I was afraid they had gotten frozen through all the days of sleet and snow that we've had since the beginning of April, plus several nights of temperatures down in the 20s. The lilacs appear to have come through the cold temperatures in pretty good shape, though, so that's good.
If the weather holds, and it stays warm, and we don't end up with more rain to make the garden too muddy, we might be able to plant some of it within the next week or two. If that's the case, we'll beat last year by a couple of weeks. We couldn't even think about planting the garden until the middle of June last year.
Is it possible that things are looking up? Or am I being too hopeful and optimistic?
LeAnn R. Ralph
P.S. Looking for a good book to read? You've come to right place!
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Thursday, May 19, 2005, 17:30
Rain, Rain, Go Away . . .
Enough is enough already! Once again today, it is cloudy, cool, damp, with occasional rain showers.
I looked back in my weather records and discovered that in the last 49 days, since the beginning of April, we have had only 13 days of sunshine. That means that over the past month and a half, it has been cloudy 74 percent of the time. Around here, cloudy days with rain showers and fog tends to be fall-type weather, rather than spring weather. I can often count on most of the month of November being cloudy and rainy and foggy. But in April and May, I am ready for sunshine!
I can't even get the lawn mowed. The grass had dried out enough by later Monday afternoon that I was able to start mowing. I managed to mow around the garden and in back of the barn. It took me an hour to mow that much because the grass was thick and juicy and the mower kept plugging up. I finished mowing that part, raked the clippings onto the garden, got out the weed eater, trimmed around the flower bed, looked toward the west -- and saw dark clouds. Within 10 minutes it was raining again. And I haven't seen the sun since.
Mowing around the garden and behind the barn is only about one-fifth of the whole lawn. The rest of it is starting to look like a hayfield. We had this problem last year, too, that it never dried out enough during the months of May and June to get a proper job done on the lawn. It also never warmed up enough to plant the garden until the middle of June last year, almost a month later than what we might normally be able to expect to get at least some things planted in the garden. And my sister, who lives 40 miles away, said that last year, instead of blooming by Memorial Day, her peonies didn't bloom until the Fourth of July! (My peonies didn't receive enough sunshine last year to even think about blooming.)
What I want to know is -- where's my sunshine? Where's my nice breeze out of the south to warm up the air and dry things out a little bit? How am I ever supposed to plant my garden if this keeps up? How am I going to finish puttering around in my flower beds? And if it stays cloudy and rainy, when is the mold that I am allergic to going to dry up and stop being moldy? Hmmmmm?
Okay. I'm done complaining. For now. On the bright side, at least we haven't had any sleet or snow this week. Yet.
LeAnn R. Ralph
P.S. Looking for a good book to read? You've come to right place!
P.P.S Want to comment? Click on the comments/no comments link and scroll to the bottom.