Monday Evening

My excuse for not writing an entry this time : I mowed both yards and before that I went to the store and refilled one of the dogs prescriptions and got him new food and found him the doggy dental cleaning treats he really, really, really likes. I wasn't going to do the mowing, I was still coasting on a dental treats high, but after dinner I went into the yard to read my book in the restful outdoor environment and I got to looking around and it it didn't look good and did not invoke feelings of  ease. Its an an unwelcome side effect of having nice yard furniture - I spend more time in the yard.

And I'm sitting there thinking about the yard and what I have to do pre-mowing of yard.

1. Put shoes on, which means going in the house and finding the shoes and then finding the keys to the shed and getting out the cords and the mower. And its hot.

2. This is a lot of work for  the relatively invisible back yard. I am the only one who sees the back yard and I get no neighbor shaming points for having the back yard in a mowed condition. If I am going to mow, I am going to mow the front yard.

3. The front yard is bigger and requires both extension cords.

4.There are a lot of tree roots in the front yard.

5. I have to continually re-set the height of the mower.

6.One side of the yard is always longer than the other side of the yard because of the tree root issue.

7. Pretty sure this is not clear to passers by or neighbors.

I mow the front yard. The ground cover looks much nicer when it is short. I also water the plants on the front porch. Hard choices are going to be made about the dead ferns.  I move to the back yard because it now looks really bad, even worse than the possibly dead fern, and I will kick myself if I don't take care of it now that I have everything out.

8. Discover that the hedge in the back is awful and the vanquished red buds are staging a come back.  Trim the hedge and beat back the nascent red bud insurrection.

Put everything back, re-lock the door and watch my daily fourteen year old NYPD Blue rerun.