Mowed Over

I came home and noticed the vacant house across the street was having its yard mowed. I was being Neighbor Shamed by a vacant house.

I came inside and sulked a bit. I really wanted to  not mow the yard, even though at lunch I had decided that I was going to mow it, a few more hours of work made me change my mind about doing additional labor. Now I had to mow the yard today. Now.

The front yard was first up, its the most visible and if nothing else got accomplished, my front yard was going to get mowed. It wasn't as bad as I had thought and about half the weeds were in pretty good shape. I did learn that my beloved yellow extension cord might be ready for retirement, it kept popping loose from the plug on the machine and I kept having to stop and mess with it and that really did not help my mowing vibe at all, I love that extension cord as much as you can love an extension cord and it makes me sad that it may have come to the end of its working life. It may have become over extended, poor dear. I'll have to shoot it like an old horse

Now back yard looked even more awful by comparison, and that it needed to be done as well. Now. Really should have been done a week ago. I move some things around and got down to it. I'm mowing away and I go to mow a new section, a section I have mowed before this season already with not problem. There is wooden base of a planter that has been laying there for a year I used it as a flat platform for the sprinkler last season and it was fine.

What I did not count on was the addition a baby snake under it. The snakes tiny body raised it just enough to introduce it to my mowers blade ( no snakes were harmed). It was a short but passionate encounter. I immediately flipped the mower over and saw that this had the potential to be a big problem. I also saw that I needed to unplug the machine right now before I did anything more advanced than studying the situation because I really wanted to mess with it, and  any success, could be an even more huge problem.

I  hastily unplugged the mower  and tried  unsuccessfully to pry the piece out, in fact, I  may forced the two objects into a deeper embrace. I thought that I was going o have to get the blade off the machine because banging on the wood and spinning it around was not working or helping the situation. I still liked the banging idea though, it had merit. And was very satisfying.

Onto the basement where I got my mallet and my ratchet set, to remove the blade if it came to that. I took them back upstairs to see how our patients were doing. Still together, how cute. I tried again to shift it, now armed with a better tool and lo and behold, success!

Broke those two up like the  last act of a Shakespeare play! I disposed of the wood, put my tools back and returned to my job. I even mowed the fallow garden, which had fallowed itself into being huge eyesore. Due to my hard work, it is now only a mid-sized eyesore.

It was while I was pulling some tall grass from the fence that tragedy struck : In the overgrown weeds, I found a very dead rat. A very dead, very big rat. At first I thought it was a squirrel, but its tail told the tale. A Very Big Rat.

I went back to the rest of the yard and tried to pretend that it didn't happen. I finished up, put the mower away, distributed the lawn trimmings and went inside the bleach my entire body.

My yards look nice. I'm thinking of getting some bedding plants and filling my hanging baskets from last season. And never, ever going into the fallow garden again without a flamethrower.