a bit more tidy
Thursday, June 27th, 2013I’d been telling myself I needed to rent the mower from the hardware store in town near Roundrock for the last few visits. There is, apparently, a good time to mow tall grass in the wild, and for all I know, this is not the time. (It has something to do with the needs of the wild critters at different times of the year.) But opportunity and muscle coincided, and a loose belt on the machine resulted in a nice discount on the cost, so last weekend was mowing weekend at Roundrock.
#1 Son, Seth, was along for our visit, which meant I had a second set of muscles to fight the rented mowing machine with. (It’s a beast.)
First priority was the top of the dam. We cross the dam a lot to get to the southern half of our woods, and while it’s no great hardship to push through the tall grass there, it is tick infested, and poor Queequeg, though eager and willing, has a hard time navigating it. Plus, there is something pleasing to my eye to see a well trimmed top of the dam.
So as soon as we unloaded the rented mower from the back of the Prolechariot, Seth fired it up and proceeded to steer it down the road toward the dam. The drive belt then fell off. You can imagine how frustrating that was. (One time when I rented this same mower, the tire literally fell off the wheel. I guess it wasn’t inflated enuf and lost the seal.) Fortunately, Seth has a graduate degree in engineering, so he was able to figure out the problem and the solution. And soon the top of the dam was mowed. I told him to try to get as close to the edge as he could, but this was a bad idea. He lost control of the beast and followed it down the side of the dam. Fortunately, he was able to put it in gear and drive it back up the side of the dam, but the nature of the language he was using at the time suggested to me that I shouldn’t suggest to him that he mow the face of the dam while he was down there. (It does need to be mowed, but it is pretty much too steep.)
Our second mowing item for the day was the pine plantation, which you can see in the top photo above. I don’t suppose mowing the tall grass around the pines does anything for their recovery, but the blackberries are still intent on reclaiming Blackberry Corner, and the beast of a mower is the best way to persuade them that this is a foolish venture on their part. Plus it will allow me to walk in there with the fertilizer spikes and (perhaps foolishly) assist with their recovery. Both Seth and I wielded the mower for this job. It is a bit challenging since there are pines in the way, so you have to adjust your trajectory as you hustle along behind the machine, and then you have to plan a different angle of attack for your return, trying to get as close to the fenced trees as you can without ripping the fence away. (I didn’t succeed too much at this in a couple of cases.)
The pines are at the northwest corner of our woods. And the dam is nearly as far east as you can get and still be on our property. Seth simply put the mower in gear and followed it down the road from A to B, mowing much of the tall grass that is growing in the road as he went. That was like the fourth mowing item on our agenda for the day. (When he finished with the pines, he followed the mower back to the cabin, thus cutting a wider swath from B to A.)
Then it was lunch time. (Sub sandwiches, a cookie, and iced tea, unsweetened, of course.) Our intent was to go swimming in the lake. The temp was above 90 degrees, and we hadn’t set foot in the lake yet this year, so that was definitely on the agenda. But we had that rented mower, and we had two containers of gas with us. And we were nourished from our lunch. So I suggested that Seth take the mower down among the pecans below the dam and at least cut the perimeter and a few paths across the center to allow more easy passage across it. He was game, and soon the mower was chopping its way down the road and into the tall grass among the pecans. (When the dam builder cleared this area for us a decade ago, I couldn’t imagine anything could grow there. It was a field of shattered chert. But now the grass and scrub grow tall and robust.)
Seth went around the perimeter a few times, widening his swath as he went, and then cut a few paths across the middle. I took the handles of the machine and cut a bit more. But the sun was high in the sky, and the cool water of the lake beckoned, so Seth drove the mower back up the road (widening that swath as well) and we loaded into the back of the Prolechariot. Then we jumped in the lake. And an unexpected thunder storm soon followed, cutting short our lake time, but that’s another story for another day, perhaps.