I mowed the lawn

Normally, "I mowed the lawn," is more a statement of fact than a proclamation of accomplishment. However, in my case, it happens to be the latter.

Growing up, I mowed our lawn in Pennsylvania on a riding tractor. (My scanner refuses to scan, so I took a picture of the picture, and there you have it.)

Not appreciating my carving Ses into the lawn, my dad quickly taught me the intricacies of mowing a straight line. After that, I didn't have a bit of trouble. Although it was one of my assigned "chores," I quite enjoyed it. It was like I was driving a car. Only it was a mower. And I wasn't allowed on the road.

When we settled in The Holler, Seth attempted to teach me to mow the lawn with The Beast (pictured here). I told him I would do so when he began to clean the bathroom. His enthusiasm for my learning quickly waned.

For all of two years I've managed to evade The Beast. However, with Seth working 14+ hour days, the lawn has gone unmown for the past two weeks. Appeals for help to his younger brother Ethan were useless ("I'm not wearing my mowing clothes today," "I have a sore throat today," "I worked outside all day today"). Finally, not wanting the chiggers to think they'd found a new playground, I decided I would take it upon myself to mow our 1 acre+ jungle.

And so I did. After a brief run-in with a rose bush and some decorative stones ("Don't worry," Seth said, "it stops when you let go of the handles." .. Um, no ... no, it doesn't.), I got the hang of walking behind a rather large mower while using the hand controls to guide it in 90 degree heat, blisters and bruised hands notwithstanding.

For comparison, BIL Mark once mowed our lawn using The Beast in 45 minutes. Seth's usual time of completion is 70 minutes. My time? Two hours.

Riding lawn mowers I can deal with. Walk-behind, hand-controlled mowers I am not interested in dealing with ever again. I made it quite clear to Seth that should he ever want me to participate in trimming our yard again, he will provide me with an enclosed air-conditioned, smooth-ride mower. In the meantime, I'll stick to cleaning the bathroom.

Encounters with Animals

Seth's younger sister Scarlet has a dog named Lydia. I've never met a dog more scared of people than Lydia is. Seth and I have been watching the Dog Whisperer to learn Caesar's tips for rehabilitating fraidy-cat dogs. But Scarlet doesn't seem interested in trying the string-from-tail-to-head trick to get Lydia's tail out from between her legs.

Recently Scarlet put a bag of trash on her apartment's small patio to keep Lydia from getting into the trash. Scarlet then proceeded to watch as two masked bandits ravaged her trash, while passing over a bag of Skittles. After spending some time on Google, Scarlet finally realized that there was nothing she could do to get rid of the raccoons other than wait until they were finished.

Raccoons recently raided my melon patch, leaving a half-melon calling card to let me know that they enjoyed their feast. The following day, the entire melon was gone.

It wasn't a raccoon that Ethan, Seth's younger brother (for those of you wondering -- Seth is no. 5 out of 8 children), caught in our pole barn. It was a hummingbird. It had flown into the barn the previous night while Ethan was working on his car and refused to leave. Yesterday, Ethan waited patiently on the ladder by the flower dipped in honey that Seth had hung from the rafters, finally nabbing the tiny bird, which he then brought to the house for me to photograph.

Last night, when Seth arrived home from work, he spotted this little visitor on the side of our house.

The fruits of my labors

Harvest is my favorite time of year. Well, one of my favorite times. I also like spring, when the new green leaves peek out from between bare branches, the smell of fresh spring rain wafts through the air, and crocuses push their heads up through the light snow (except that this year, they decided to come up too early and didn't get to the flower stage before they were killed by the ice storm). And yes, yes, I know, these are tulips, not crocuses.






I also like fall, when the air takes on a crisp coolness, and the leaves unmask the brilliant colors they were hiding during summer.














I don't care much for winter and its accompanying ice storms that knock the power out for days at a time when Seth happenes to be working the overnight shift. "Don't worry, the power will be back on before morning. You'll be fine." Tell that to our thermometer which registered 45 the next morning!

But I digress.






Harvesting the fruits of my spring- and summertime labors is amazingly rewarding. All the water we carried from the creek, all the weeding, all the tilling and planting become worth it when I bite into a piece of sweet cantaloupe or nibble on a slice of cool cucumber. Or when I juice them and drink their fruity nectar.

I'm continually amazed that the small seed I planted just a few short months ago has used water, nutrients from the soil, and sunlight to transform into this amazing sustenance.

 What a fascinating continuation of the plants that God created "after their kind."

Yes, harvest is a lovely time of year.

Happy Left Handed Day to me

I'm a day late in wishing myself happy left handers day. But, as with everything else for which I'm chronically late, better late than never.

When we lived in PA, we occasionally took day trips to the Baltimore Inner Harbor. There was a store there that I looked forward to visiting each time -- the left-handed store. For 364 days of the year, I lived in a hostile world, but on that one day that we travelled to the Inner Harbor, I was welcomed into a world that repsected my sinistrality. T-shirts ("If the right side of the brain controls that left side of the body, then only left-handed people are in their right minds"), scissors, mugs, writing utensils ... all dedicated to those who favor their left hand.

In elementary school, after having no success using the regular scissors, I figured out that I needed to use the "special" green-handled scissors to cut paper. I was always seated on the left end of the table, so that I didn't bump the right-handed person sitting next to me. The side of my hand was continually blue and my papers were smeared from dragging my hand through the fresh ink. My sixth grade math teacher, Mr. Hicks (not known for his kindness to students), made fun of the crooked way I numbered my papers. Yes, being sinister in a dexter world can be tough.

I have my revenge on the right-handers of the world in my own little way -- I've switched the mouse buttons on my computer to the left-handed setting. When the IT guy or my dear husband attempts to use my laptop, I take a certain perverse pleasure in watching him struggle to get the "right click" button to work.

Happy belated Left Handed Day to the dextrously challenged in the crowd!

Dan and the Sheep

As I've mentioned before, my life is full of Dans. One of those Dans is my BIL, married to Seth's older sister Katy.

Dan grew up on a farm. And he was a 4-h'er (I pledge my head to clear thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to larger service, and my health to better living for my club, my community, my country, and my world -- yes, folks, I was in 4-h, too).






When we visited the Wentz farmstead, Dan was irate that the sheep were penned in an area that had no grass upon which they could graze. So, he and Seth made it their mission (for the few brief minutes that we were there) to provide the sheep (vintage Revolutionary War era sheep) with the greens they needed. The sheep actually seemed quite happy to eat the plucked grass.









Dan also decided that the Wentz cattle needed help. So he tried his hand at feeding them, as well. But the beasts were having none of it. They preferred to stand placidly in the shade swatting the flies from each other with their tails.



Since then, rumors have begun circulating in Blue Bell, PA, of a shadowy figure who periodically emerges from the woods near the Wentz farmstead, tosses freshly picked grass over the fence into the sheep pen, and disappears again into the darkness, while yelling, "Save the sheep!"

Ways to Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity

Judi is a friend and former coworker. We had some good times down in the musty, moldy, fruit-fly-infested basement of our place of work (before we moved into our current beautiful fruit-fly-free building). Between chair dancing and taking 10 minute eye rests every hour, we kept ourselves amused while we froze in the winter and sweltered in the summer. She sent me this "forward" years ago, and we actually tried some of the suggested items periodically. I just received it again from another friend, and it amused me all over again. I'm posting it here for your reading pleasure.

1. At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a hair dryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.

2. Page yourself over the intercom. Don't disguise your voice.

3. Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want fries with that.

4. Put your garbage can on your desk, and label it "in."

5. Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine additions, switch to espresso.

6. In the memo field of all your checks, write "For Smuggling Diamonds."

7. Finish all your sentences with "In accordance with the prophecy."

8. Don't use any punctuation.

9. As often as possible, skip rather than walk.

10. Order a diet water water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.

11. Specify that your drive-through order is "to go."

12. Sing along at the opera.

13. Go to a poetry recital, and ask why the poems don't rhyme.

14. Put mosquito netting around your work area, and play tropical sounds all day.

15. Five days in advance, tell your friends you can't attend their party because you're not in the mood.

16. Have your co-workers address you by your wrestling name, Rock Bottom.

17. When the money comes out of the ATM, scream, "I won! I won!"

18. When leaving the zoo, start running towards the parking lot, yelling "Run for your lives -- they're loose!"

19. Tell your children over dinner, "Due to the economy, we are going to have to let one of you go."

Rose and the Freebies

My SIL Rose just may be the thriftiest person I know (she's pictured here with her husband Mark several years ago). I admire her ability to sniff out a great deal from a mile away. She's the designated VBS craft lady, in part because she thinks up fun crafts, and in part because she finds craft supplies inexpensively. She once bought a million baby food jars on ebay for $10 (only a slight exaggeration). Her latest acquisitions were free:

Today was an overall good day. Freebie day. Where to start...I didn't go to church this morning due to migraine. Mark happened to mention this fact to our chiropractor friend who seemed very concerned. However, when Mark & boys returned I was feeling much better.

We were going to cancel going to Mark's nephew's birthday party today in favor of going to a sunday school cookout this evening which would have overlapped. (Plus we took Casey out to a tractor show on Friday for his birthday anyway.)

Mark's sister called from the birthday party to say her neighbor was giving away her newly purchased (2 wks ago for $250) big outdoor trampoline with safety net to the first person who came to take it away. Reason being...it got caught in last week's storm & bent some poles plus her child wasn't using it very much anyway (in 2 wks she has determined this??!!). We are now the proud owners.

While Mark went to pick that up with Teel, I took the other two boys to the sunday school cookout since I had already prepared my side dish and nothing else to eat. Why should we miss our meal? Turns out there was another freebie waiting here thanks to afore mentioned comment by Mark to our chiropractic friend who was hosting said cookout. Within 5 minutes of arriving, I was escorted to the garage chiropractic table for a free adjustment. Excellent!

And when we arrived home a few hours later, the trampoline had been put to rights, assembled in our back yard, and staked to the ground. Fit perfectly inside the circle of trees and rock landscaping over where the baby swing hangs which would be directly behind the garage section of our house if you are trying to place the location. The grass never grew there well anyway. And its a bit secluded--which is how I prefer to jump. Good view from the kitchen window though to watch the kids.

I can't figure out how badly disfigured it could have been if Mark could get it to rights in such a short amount of time. Surely those people could still have sold it for plenty of money. But lucky me, for I've always wanted one and Mark was never going to buy one.