back at it
we're back! no progress on projects 1 or 2 to report, however some things have been done. thursday i worked late and Chrissy went up north for a Dr appt so nothing happened that night. friday night i roamed around looking at lawn mowers (and soaked in the glory that is the many isles of joy at Lowe's -- "ooh, we could use that, and that, and that ..."). i also visited the Sears Outlet store to see if they had mowers ... they only had riders, but i did look through their appliance selection (we need to get a full assortment of appliance before we move). i was close to buying a fridge (same one we were looking at in regular Sears) but i decided (with some help from a saleswoman at regular Sears) that it was likely dropped, not just scratched. so, we'll pass on that. i do think we will be back though, seems like some good deals there. many items have just a small scratch on the side or something.saturday brought a bit of everything. i spent the morning and part of the afternoon helping some friends paint their house, i guess we'll call it training for our house.
my friend/cousin Jeff was in the area from Bloomington, so we met up for a late lunch to catch up on things and toured the house. it was good seeing him again, it had been too long and i'm glad things are going really well for him. he is official visitor #2 ... Chrissy's parents stopped in last weekend as our firsts. after jeff left, i continued my lawn mower search. i ended up going old-school style: a 20" wide Scott's Classic reel mower (see picture). as i was doing my research, these little guys kept popping up as a nice mower alternative. we'll call it the healthy alternative: healthy for me (pushing it around is good exercise), healthy for the yard (the shearing cut of these is better for the grass than the machete approach of traditional mowers), healthy for the environment (no emissions, gas mowers are notorious polluters). the downside is that they don't do well with long grass, they can get caught on twigs, and they won't mulch up leaves like a regular mower (maybe we'll look for a cheap, used push mower to chop up some fall leaves). i talked with my bro Nate before buying because i know they have one. they like it despite some of the downsides. the box fit nicely in my trunk and within 20 mins i was mowing. i mowed essentially twice that night because the grass was REALLY long. they are actually pretty darn fun to use ... for mowing the lawn anyway. they make a nice scissors-like noise and have a nice little spray of clippings that is fun to watch (confirmed by Chrissy who got home about this time). it was actually a lot easier to push than i expected also -- they're a lot lighter and smoother than your granddaddy's reel mower. upon mowing, my feelings about our lawn were confirmed: it sucks. i think we have more weeds than grass at the moment. and it's kinda lumpy. so, i will start treating with a weed & feed product this fall so hopefully by next summer we have some decent grass (preview of an upcoming project). i think i'm going to try to get the lawn rolled in the spring to smooth it out a bit too. after that, we went home and i cried myself to sleep after the shalacking Purdue took that night.Sunday afternoon we went back out. since we had sunlight we
decided to work outside. i did another quick mowing (and probably will again Tues or Weds) to hit some of the long pieces that didn't get mowed before. i think it will take a bit to catch up since it got so long. Chrissy pulled a ton of weeds up front. there were some old pallets and misc. trash out by the old garage that i pulled apart (let's hope the trash man will take the 3' high pile of wood i left along the alley). Chrissy cleaned out the mini shed thing. we hit the jackpot of plastic cups in there! we weren't able to look in there before (it was locked) ... apparently the old owners came and took off the padlock sometime last week. we also found 2 more old house doors and a bunch of spiders. after cleaning it out, we also moved it over by the other "garage" where the pallets/trash had been. we figured we'd trade grassless spots to have it in a better location. let's just say it's not the sturdiest of structures either. sorry, the pics didn't turn out so well because it was getting dark, so i'll add one later. we also got our third visitors, our friends Kristi and Traci stopped in to take a look around. after they left we decided to call it quits. we were pretty tired, hungry, and dirty.
posted by Chris and Chrissy Miller @ 9:56 PM
2 Comments:
When i first opened this blog and saw that picture of the manual push mower, i thought to myself, "Ha! Look at what they found in that garage." Chris, even all my parents' amish neighbors have gas powered mowers ....
So proud of you to have picked the best option! Also, I recommend looking at corn gluten as a natural weed and seed. It should be available at your local garden store if it is just a tiny bit environmentally friendly. We bought some but haven't had a chance to put it on yet. You have to put it on right before it rains.
-deb
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