I drive and I push

We have a saying in our family that I often use when things get too complicated for me and/or are outside my jurisdiction:  “I drive.”  It means, “I don’t know about that,” or “I can’t do anything about that.”  As in, Scott decides which route we are going to take, but I drive.  I really like driving, especially on long trips.  Driving is very relaxing for me.

Today I added another phrase:  “I push.”  It means that when Andrew turned on the riding mower (which was serviced at Doc’s Mowers for a cost of over $250 a few weeks ago because its drive belt fell off and mere mortals can’t put the drive belt on – but we did have them replace the blades and do the annual tune-up while they had it – and when we got it back ten days ago and Scott used it for 30 minutes the drive belt fell off again – and Doc had it for over a WEEK this time, putting a drive belt on it – and it came home yesterday afternoon and Josiah used it for his part of the yard and it was fine, thank goodness) . . . As I was saying, when Andrew backed the rider out of the lawn building this afternoon to do his part of the mowing, the drive belt fell off and I told him that he’d have to do his part of the yard with the (brand new – thank you, Scott!) push mower, he said he refused to do it with the push mower. And Jessica and Josiah are both sick and Katie’s on the road, and Scott had said it needed to be done by Wednesday night, so I said, “Fine.  If you won’t do your lawn chore, I will do it and I will get the pay you would normally receive for doing it.  And while I do your mowing, you will do my cleaning chores.”  And thus did it happen.

I will confess that it was very hot and I thought several times that I might fall over, but I endured to the end and successfully push mowed our back yard (approximately one-half acre) in the blazing sun at the hottest part of the day.

I push.

Like Habakkuk said

“Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls—
Yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.”   (Hab 3:16-18)

So Katie’s leaving on Tuesday, and I, the Intrepid Planner of All Things have created a nifty plan for that day:

1.  Katie leaves

2.  We cry

3.  We all work like crazy to make plum preserves

Last year, immediately after #1 and #2, we had a very successful Plum Preserving Party, but I did end up having to run buy a few necessary supplies that we ran out of.  In my zeal to be ready for the Big Day this year, I am pleased to say that already last week I bought jelly jars, sugar, and fruit pectin – each in significant quantities.

Then a couple days ago, one of our neighbors stopped by to ask if he could trim two of our trees that overhang Coffee Road.  It seems that his motor home is 12 and a half feet high, and he can’t get it under the dangling branches of one of our big boxelder trees and some other tree of our that’s right along the road.  I was fine with that – after all, who can argue with free tree trimming? – and while he maneuvered his cherry picker into position, I walked back toward the house, passing under the plum trees as I went.

And I looked up.  And it was then that I noticed that there was a small solitary orange-ish plum dangling from a branch.  I scanned the plummy canopy.  That plum was the only plum.  One lonely 1.25-inch plum.  No plums scattered and rotting all over the ground under foot.  No insects whizzing around licking up leaking sweetness.  No thousands of purple plums ready to drop into our buckets on Tuesday.  No, I am appalled to announce that there are no plums ripening on our trees!

Every other year at this time, they’ve been turning purple and falling like raindrops.  Most years, we just let them fall, and after a week or so, that twenty-foot stretch of Coffee Road blacktop is sticky with busted-open plums, and that corner of our property smells like a plum wine distillery!

But alas, alack, even though both plum trees bloomed beautifully in the spring, and even though I don’t recall us having had a late killer frost, it appears that there will be no #3 this year.

“Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.”

Transformation

We arrived home from our vacation to find that our yard had been completely transform.

In the dwindling percentage of lawn not covered by mountainous molehills, the ground cover is actually GREEN.  And I’m talking about almost ALL the weeds; not just the wild onions.   We also have those little purple-flowered sticking-up weeds all over the place, and the daffodils are in full bloom.

Then, in just the four days since we arrived, a few tulip leaves have pushed their way up through the mulch in the big bed, the crocus leaves have sprouted, the forsythia bush by the smokehouse has created a few feeble blooms (although other forsythias in the neighborhood are completely loaded with flowers), the Bradford pear has flowered, and this morning two crocuses – one white and one purple – both burst open.  Wow!

Spring is my favorite season, but it always seems to come too early.  I am never ready for its rushed days of frantic peeping, blooming, chirping, and changing.  I wish it would all slow down and space itself out better, so that I could enjoy each event deeply and singly.  However, even though spring will surely crash fatally into the dreaded heat of summer, today I am choosing to simply enjoy the springiness of it all.

Pole saw is man’s best friend

It is in the nature of the male of our species to conquer, to smash, to subjugate, and in general to exert power over his environment.  This possibly explains why some men deliberately smash into each other on a grassy field as they attempt to move an odd-shaped ball from Point A to Point B.  And why others rip phone books in half or shatter cinder blocks with their bare feet.  And in our case, why my husband, a man of great intelligence, creativity, AND strength decided to attack our trees with his pole saw.

It all came about because of my worry box.  During one Sunday sermon, our pastor mentioned in passing someone else who tends to worry about things.  That person made a worry box, and every time he was worried about something, he wrote it down, put it in the box, and forgot it.  Every Wednesday, he would open the box, read the items, and either throw them out (if they no longer applied), deal with them, or put them back in the box.

I tend to worry a lot, and I told Scott, jokingly, that I need a worry box too!  So, we made one, and he told me that if I was worried about something, I should put it on a card in the box, and HE would go through the box each Wednesday.  Now this is quite a good deal for me!!!

I had put a card in the Wednesday Worry Box last week that said I was worried about the branches that lay on our roof.  Our trees are large and overhang the house in places.  This makes for good shade, but somewhere in my past, I had picked up the concept that branches should not lay on the roof.  Several huge ones of ours did.  I had requested the removal of said branches several times over the past few years, but they had not yet jumped off the roof.  Since I had put my Trees On Roof worry in the box, I promptly forgot all about it.

Yesterday afternoon, Josiah came to get me and told me he needed me to hold a rope and pull it.  Hmmm…  We got outside and looked up.  Scott was on the roof of the playroom.  The ladder was also up on the playroom roof, and it was leaning against the main part of the house.  Scott had his trusty weedeater-with-pole-saw-attachment as he climbed the ladder.  Josiah tossed down to me a rope that was looped around the rather substantial main branch of a walnut tree that had been resting comfortably on our roof for some time.  I was instructed that “when it starts to break, pull hard!”

Yes, I would have the sole responsibility for making sure that the brawny branch (it was probably twelve feet long and three or four inches in diameter, with many branches and their associated leafiness also attached) did not fall on Scott’s head or Josiah’s.  No pressure.

I did manage to take a number of pictures, mostly because no one would believe the paces Scott put that pole saw through and the altitude from which he operated.  I did successfully heave-ho the monster branch at the right moment, no one was injured and the pole saw was still functional.  It’s a good thing because that first tree established Scott’s momentum as a bona fide tree trimmer.  He scurried all over the front and side yards, whacking off everything from dead twigs to the entire (dead) half of our two-trunk paper birch.

Nothing leafless was safe.  It reminded me of Jesus’ story about the fruitless tree:  “there’s no fruit on this tree, so whack it down!”  Once most of the offending branches had succumbed to gravity, Scott went to work making firewood.  Basically, he used the pole saw to trim the branches down to hauling size.  At that point, those of us with less testosterone hauled them to the burn pile.  Meanwhile, Scott pole sawed their trunks into fireplace-sized logs.  Actually, the girls and I suspect that several of them are a lot shorter than necessary – just because the pole saw makes it so fun to slice and dice timber.  It’s a guy thing.

This afternoon, Scott was hard at it again.  There was still the massive branch (even bigger than the aforementioned walnut tree branch) on the back of the roof, the little bit of walnut tree still dangling against the chimney, AND the truly significant limb and accoutrements laying (or is it lying?  I never remember that one) on the smokehouse roof.

With Jessica holding the ladder, he managed to lop off the back roof problem, but I ended up holding the ladder for a fairly scary one.  While I watched the preparations being made, I was really hoping it wouldn’t end up like those cartoons where the guy climbs a tree, runs out on a limb, and triumphantly saws off the branch he’s standing on.  Let’s just saw that he had the ladder up one two stacks of two cinder blocks, it was almost fully extended, and it was leaning against the branch he was sawing off.  It all worked out okay, but when the pole saw got pinched in the groove as the branch began to break, I confess that I had visions of Scott hanging onto his beloved pole saw and being pulled down with the ensuing avalanche of limbs.

The final giant to conquer was a set of fairly lacy limbs (walnut tree again) brushing against the chimney.  Now, the chimney is stone and probably wouldn’t be harmed by having branches leaning against it – in fact, they may help hold it up. . . hmmmm. . . – but with ALL the other visually offensive leafy detritus gone, one simply COULDN’T leave those few branches there.

Back up onto the playroom roof went My Hero, pulling his ladder and pole saw up after him.  He parked the ladder next to the house and leaned it (again almost fully extended) against the chimney.  That would be the chimney that has been steadily removing itself from the house for a couple of years.  He then started the pole saw and ascended the ladder, held firmly by Josiah – under my penalty of death.

Scott then let go of the ladder completely, in order to swing the pole saw up toward its intended victim.  I should get points for keeping my eyes open while I prayed.  The pole saw is a weedeater with a mini-chainsaw attachment that can be substituted for the regular weedeater thing.  It also has an extension that makes the handle longer.  The whole outfit is maybe six feet (?) long.

I watched in disbelief as Scott gripped the ladder with his left hand, held the near end of the pole saw with right hand, and swung the apparatus up over his head and out to the right at a 45 degree angle, trying to get it to lay (lie?) against the base of his intended victim.  It took a few tries to get it to bounce/land where he wanted it.  Then he commenced a sawing motion, and that’s when I really needed a card for my Worry Box! Here he was, sawing determinedly, with the saw resting on top of this branch.  What would happen when he sawed it through?!?  Obviously, the pole saw would come crashing down (with no branch to support it), and as it swung down, would it hit Josiah?  or Scott?  or knock Scott off balance and off the ladder?

I STILL kept my eyes open while I prayed.

No problem.  He sawed off offending branch #27, flicked the pole saw off, and carefully lowered it to Josiah.  Just like he trimmed trees without ropes, belts, or harnesses from precarious perches for a living!

Now there are absolutely NO branches touching our roof or the smokehouse roof, we have an incredible amount of brush to burn, and we have a litle stack of sticks for the fireplace.

And Scott said over and over how glad he is that my folks gave him his pole saw.

I went to Lowe’s

These are words that probably cause heart palpitations for my husband.  I really like Lowe’s, and you will soon be able to tell by our VISA charges.  Actually, it wasn’t all that bad.  It’s spring, and I am READY to do some gardening tasks.  While I have accumulated some of the necessary supplies here, a trips to Lowe’s was in order.

It would be nicer if Lowe’s were a little less than 12 miles from home.  However, living where we do, everything is at least seven miles away.  A Home Depot went in at Branson Hills Parkway, and that’s only eight miles, but I just do not like Home Depot nearly as much as Lowe’s.

When we lived in Little Rock, we fought a monumental battle with Planning and Zoning to prevent a Lowe’s from going in against our back property line.  Instead, it became a Best Buy, and all things considered, I’d probably rather had Lowe’s.

I gave a lot of thought and planning to my purchases today.  There are three distinct projects underway in our yard.

First, I want to enlarge the flower bed around the tree in the front yard.  This required additional terra cotta looking edging stone stuff, and more garden soil.

Second, I am enlarging the mailbox flower bed and putting a firm front edge on it.  Some of the garden soil will go for that, and I bought some nice little $0.38 pavement stones that will run right along the pavement.  Right now the soil of the bed just runs flush with the pavement, and that means lots of little bits of gravel and miscellaneous gradu are thrown into the bed.  For the curved side, I am using more stones from our property.  We have no lack of stones.  This morning I pulled quite a few out of the drainage ditch, but I don’t have enough yet.  I must make it a priority to get the rest out before the poison ivy starts growing in the ditch.

Third, I will plant tomatoes in our barrels again, and for that I needed potting soil and $3.48 worth of tomatoes.

To top it all off (literally) I bought a bag of mulch.  I think it will take about five more bags of mulch to do the whole job, but I want to sell Scott on how nice it looks first.

Sure signs of spring

First, the tulip and daffodils push up through the flower bed and yard, respectively. (almost three weeks ago)

Second, we experience The Invasion of the Ladybugs.  They show up on the kitchen ceiling, then on and around the kitchen windowsill, and finally in the boys’ bathroom.  I actually like ladybugs, so having a dozen or so visit me each spring is not bothersome.  (over two weeks ago)

Second, the spring peepers start peeping loudly at dusk. (last Wednesday)

Third, the forsythia next to the smokehouse pushes out its first yellow bud. (It wasn’t there last night, but it’s blooming – all alone – this morning.)

Fourth, the daffodils on the east side of the sidewalk actually bloom.   We don’t know why the west side daffodils a mere four feet away always bloom later or not at all.  (Today!)

So spring is on the way, even though, once again, we didn’t have much in the way of winter. Soon we’ll have balmy breezes, the cliff swallows will begin nesting under the bridge, and before we know it, the Bradford Pear will be in full bloom.

I love spring! It’s also my favorite time for nature photography, but it will require careful planning for me to slice out the time to do that. Between AIM (big three), gymnastics (Andrew), piano lessons (Jessica, Andrew, and I), Boy Scouts (Josiah), basketball (Scott), ministry board meeting (Scott and I), Jessica’s babysitting, Katie’s never-ending award ceremonies, and camera (Josiah and I) and nursery (Jessica) volunteering at church, there’s only one day left this month with a blank calendar box.

Who should mow the grass?

When we bought these two and a half acres, half of which is in lawn, we also bought a riding mower from the previous owner.  We had never lived in the country and had no idea what such a thing should cost.  I think it was figured into the mortgage, and I think we paid way too much.  That machine lasted long enough for us to take some funny pictures of Scott zipping along while holding a beach umbrella over himself.  However, Scott didn’t really have time to mow, I had no desire to mow, and our oldest child was only six. Within a few months, the rider was dead, and we hired Reggie.

Reggie is a fifty-something neighbor down by the creek, who keeps his own property looking very nice.  At the time, he managed a convenience store by the state line and left for work about 5:30 AM.  After work, he mowed for extra income.  He was THE FASTEST mower I’ve ever seen.  In ninety minutes, he rode and weed-eated our entire yard and it always looked spiffy.  We paid him the going rate (per job), and let’s just say that as fast as he worked, his hourly rate was astounding.

Somewhere along the line, we bought another rider and a used (green) push mower.  Later on, we bought an electric (corded) weed-eater.  When Katie was about 12, we began  requiring her to mow the place for a pittance as one of her weekly summer chores.  It took her a lot longer than it took Reggie, but she did a a great job, too.  We got her a cordless weed-eater, which ended up working for two seasons, but finally got to where it would only run for 27 seconds after charging for eight hours.  So Katie did the lawn till Jessica turned 12, at which point Jessica took over the sweat-for-squat mowing chore.  Gas had gone up a bit, so we increased Jessica’s pay a bit – a very little bit.  We also bought another (red) push mower, when our trusty old green one bit the dust.

The next year, Jessica decided to split the work and the pay (which we again inched upward) with Josiah.  She rode and weed-eated; he pushed.  We also bought a gas weed-eater, which the kids were finally big enough to handle.

This year, Josiah is 13 and fully in charge of mowing, and, while we have certainly had our share of lawn equipment woes in the past (as in, the year that you spend $200 pre-season to have the rider serviced, it breaks down over and over all summer, but the year you don’t service it at all, it runs fine – go figure), that was NOTHING compared to the challenges we have now.  Almost every time he goes to mow, something goes wrong.

It could be that the rider won’t start.  (dead battery?  loose cables?  who knows?)  Or maybe it’s running rough.  (spark plug?  need oil?  who knows?)  Or the push mower won’t start.  (always a total mystery)  Or the weed-eater twine won’t advance.   (screw thing at the end is busted and wants a certain touch)  Or the push mower is blowing black smoke.  (burning oil?)

It doesn’t really matter and I’m not even surprised any more.   EVERY time it’s time to mow, something breaks.  And to make matters a little spicier, now that Andrew has taken over push-mowing the front yard (for which we pay him the magnificent sum of $1, while still paying Josiah his full amount for all the riding, all the weed-eating and the rest of the pushing – but Josiah has to buy all the gas), we have to deal with that idiotic feature of all push-mowers manufactured in recent years:  that stupid little metal bar that you have to keep squeezed against the main bar in order to keep the mower running.  Our old faithful green model was free of such idiocy, but the red one’s got the bar.

Gooo-ooo-oood night!  Do I really need the government to keep me from injuring myself with my own mower?  Are we living in 1984?  With my carpal tunnel problems, squeezing that stupid little bar makes my fingers go numb.  And, when you’re eight years old and you pause to wipe the sweat from your brow (inadvertently pausing releasing the stupid little bar), the mower quits and you have to either go find your (riding or weed-eating) brother and frustrate him by asking him to stop his own work to re-start your mower, or you have to go inside and ask a sister or mother to do it.  Neither of these options is a maximally efficient use of any of our family members’ time!

So today, the boys were mowing and

A)  the rider was out of gas and the station next door was closed (read “drive up to Gateway and spend $2.89/gallon”),

B)  the push mower “completely died,” requiring Josiah to weed-eat all the grass (including the dreaded ditch) that he usually pushes, and

C)  the weed-eater twine thingy would not unscrew for love or money, so Josiah had only two inches of twine available (read, “it’s gonna take a LONG time to trim this these 1.5 acres with scissors.”)

Josiah asked me to try to unscrew it.  This was somewhat of a joke, because a mere three days ago, I was trying to unscrew a new salsa jar’s recalcitrant lid, and after trying all the old standbys (running the lid under hot water, banging it with the handle of a butter knife, grunting hard and saying, “hoomp-hah”) unsuccessfully, I had sought Josiah’s brawn to solve that problem.  Did he now REALLY think that I could unscrew the weed-eater twine thing when he couldn’t?  I tried, but I could not.

The only other option was Dad, who was upstairs in the office trying to earn a living – to help pay for lawn equipment, among other things – and who was slightly frustrated already, because he had been interrupted numerous times, had banged his knee on the sharp metal corner of his desk pull-out while trying to help me help Jessica with what turned out to be a stupidly simple geometry problem AND had just had telephone go-around #13 with the folks who are supposed to be installing our Dish Network TV system – ten days ago.  I told Josiah that Dad was not about to come back down and go outside to try to unscrew the weed-eater twine thing, and that he (Josiah) should take it up to the office, hand it to Dad, and ask him to give it a yank.

Josiah did exactly as I said, but Dad was just then on the phone with the admissions office of one of the colleges Katie is considering,  trying to arrange for him and her to visit said.  He motioned to Josiah to “GET THAT THING OUT OF HERE!”  So I told Jo to put it out in the hall and find something useful to do till Dad got off the phone.  When Scott hung up, Josiah was nowhere to be seen, and Scott was NOT happy about a weed-eater in the house.  He wanted it out on the front porch, so he put it there himself.  He then returned to the office and I asked if he had gotten the twine thing unscrewed.  No, he didn’t know where Josiah was.  Was that the question I asked?  Sheesh.

So, Josiah eventually re-appeared, and Scott left his work for the umpteenth time and I guess got the dude unscrewed, because an hour later Josiah finally announced that the yard work was DONE.

Now, I still don’t know if the push mower will ever work again, but Reggie did do the whole yard with just a rider and a weed-eater (no push mower at all) for a number of years.  Hmmm…  And the main handle of the red push mower did break in two about six weeks ago – but Scott fixed that.  And then when it started making a horrid noise and bellowing black smoke, Scott took it to a repair place.  They were a little slow getting to it, so he decided (while at Wal-Mart) to just buy a new one – the cheapest one they sold, since our family is so hard on them.  He brought it home and the boys mowed with it.  The next morning first thing, he called the repair place back and told them not to mess with it, but they said they had already fixed it and it was running fine.  So he took the new one back to Wal-Mart (after it had been used to do all the push mowing on our yard!) and got all his money back, and then went and paid for and brought home the old one – the one that is now (a month or so later) “completely dead.”

Reggie went out of the mowing business a few years ago, and I doubt we could find anyone who would be willing to do our yard now for what we paid him then – although, if you add up what we pay the kids, plus the cost of buying the equipment, plus the cost of maintaining the equipment,  plus the cost of servicing the equipment, we could probably pay DOUBLE Reggie’s old rate and still come out ahead.

Ah, but then what would the kids learn about work and money?