I Fought the Lawn

There’s a T-shirt that says, “I fought the lawn … and the lawn won.”

Not today it didn’t!

That’s thanks to one of my neighbors. Before I got outside, Mrs. C. came over and said, “I see you’ve got clippings bagged up. We’re going to the dump soon, so if you want we can just throw these in the truck so you don’t have to take them in the car.” I could have kissed her. But that would have been weird, so I didn’t.

Then, Mr.C. backed up his truck and we dumped the bags inside on top of his grass. He asked if I wanted to use some of his trash cans to collect the clippings from the back yard (which I hadn’t yet cut). He said he’d come back later and pick them up before he went to pick up his son-in-law’s clippings. (I could have kissed him, too, and while it wouldn’t exactly have been weird, it might have been ugly with his wife standing there.) Then, they even went to the neighbor lady’s across the way, took her recyclable clipping bags and a whole bunch of brush and threw those in, too. Talk about being neighborly!

The back yard, except for one section, was actually easier than the front to cut. And, using those trash cans made a HUGE difference. I’m guessing that between not having to fight with trash bags AND not having to make two trips to the dump, they shaved at least 90 minutes off the job! God bless them.

Then I hooked up our hose. I had to uncover the faucet and go downstairs and turn on the water to it. Then I unrolled the hose and put the sprayer on. I concluded that this sad ass excuse of a hose needs to be replaced. But, it worked well enough to spray off the A/C unit (it had a bunch of feathers and gunk and little furry tree pieces stuck to it) and clean down the mower. That’s all that mattered for now.

I was going to try and set up the saw and start cutting boards for the shed, but the mother decided that she felt OK enough to eat some Chinese. (Twist my arm.) so I came in and got a shower instead. It’s wonderful to feel like a person again because man, it’s been hot today!

I just made the first Hardware Heaven trip of my vacation (I needed trim for the shed) and then picked up food. All in all, it’s been a productive 24 hours. I would like to have gotten all the boards cut so that tomorrow I just need to put them up, but you have to ease into these kinds of activities, right? (Well, that’s what I’m planning to do at least.) After months of only occasionally hefting household stuff, trash or laundry, today was quite a work-out.

Right now, there’s an order of beef and broccoli with my name on it out there and I’m going to go claim it!