After her temper tantrum of the day before, throwing lightning bolts and growling with thunder, Nature did an abrupt about-face and showed her sunny disposition yesterday and I was able to get out to the west field to mow in the afternoon. The grass and weeds (mostly weeds!) had shot up over a foot in an amazingly short time. This is most apparent under the wisteria vine to the left in the back corner of the garden. The roof of the house is just over the hill.
The goat pen is straight ahead. While putt-putting along their fence line, the girls followed, hoping that some of that sweet-smelling stuff would get thrown their way. As I moved in ever-decreasing concentric circles, they gave up and settled for the grass on their side of the fence. It takes a lot longer to mow the field when the grass gets so high. In order not to strain the poor old tractor (the little one), it's necessary to take baby bites, a half or sometimes even just a quarter of the blade space on each pass. The field was liberally sprinkled with blue lupine and I always feel awful when I have to cut that down. With no power steering and less-than-adequate springs, riding the mower is like riding a horse with a stiff-legged trot for a couple of hours...hard on the butt. I'd planned to get all of the yards cut down, but after finishing this field, pleasant as it was to be outside on a glorious day, I called it quits and went in for a beer break. It was a good day.
2 comments:
I can smell the wonderful aroma of newly-mown grass, and the pictures are gorgeous. Here's hoping that you have more sun, but that you don't get so butt-sprung! I have a friend in Ohio who has a zero-turn mower and she is of significant size, and to see her zip around on that thing and then make those tight turns always made me chuckle, as she looked like she was on a little kids' ride at Disneyland.
I bought a new riding mower last month and can't wait to mow the field. As I am still on travel I have yet to see it, touch it and hear it. I'll be mowing the grass on Saturday...right after a visit to the farmers market. I look forward to the prospect of a sore butt and ,of course, the beer break afterwards.
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