Riding Lawn Mower

The only thing better than a riding lawn mower is a FREE riding lawn mower! We are now the lucky owners of what I can only describe as the neighborhood hand-me-down riding lawn mower. It once belonged to someone named Randy, who gave it to the retired school-teachers at the end of our road, who then gave it to the Farmer family on the other side of us when, who passed it on to us earlier this week. Is that about the most awesome "welcome to the neighborhood" present ever, or what? Big thanks to everyone involved in this generous neighborhood network. Someday I hope we can pass it along to another household with a huge lawn to mow. :) Naturally we couldn't wait to try it out. It works just fine, the only thing wrong with it is that it tends to overheat after 20-30 minutes of operation. We might try to fix that, eventually, although it really isn't that big of a deal to let it cool down for 10 minutes or so and then go back to mowing. And man, is it ever faster than the walk-behind mower (which was also free, a hand-me-down from my parents who got themselves a brand new riding mower this spring), although it can't get quite as close to the house and other obstacles. There's nothing wrong with free lawnmowers, of any sort!

Weed Whacker

We got a weed whacker (aka string trimmer) a little while ago, but yesterday was the first day we really put it to work. It's a nice one, a Shindawa T242. It's the light end of the professional models - it's gas powered, and someday we can buy attachments for it like a hedge trimmer or an edger. Cary does several hours a day of weed whacking professionally at the cemetery, so he'd have been really frustrated with a low powered home-owner model. With the amount of grass we have out here, it was definitely worth getting the best trimmer we could afford - and it really does a great job. We cleared along both sides of the fence in front of the house, and then planted blackberries, loganberries, marionberries & tayberries (more on that in my next post).

Here's what the grass looked like before we got started:

Cary actually did most of the cutting, but I took a turn at the start:

Bwa-ha-ha! I am the all-powerful Destoyer of Grass. It can't run or hide.

Here's the whole fence, about 250' long, cleared on both sides:
Looks pretty nice, doesn't it? Lots more to do, of course. I'll be back in a while with part II - the Planting. Right now, it's a beautiful morning and I've finished my breakfast, so it's time to go back outside and do some more work!

What I got for Christmas...

Because nothing says "I Love You" like a chainsaw!I haven't used it yet (gotta get fuel) but I am SO excited to take it out and cut up some logs. Cary really got it right this year! It's a Poulan with a 14" bar, nothing fancy, but it will be a really super useful tool when we start working on landscaping, starting with cleaning up some of the trees that came down in November's storms. (I opened it on Christmas Eve, so that is the apartment in the background.)

We also received a nice shiny new sledgehammer with a fiberglass handle from Janet and Gabe, which will also be super useful in future projects, starting with finishing the split-rail cedar fence this spring. Steve & Laurie Ripp gave us a shop-vac as a housewarming present too. We haven't actually used it in the shop yet, but it's been really useful in cleaning up inside the house during the move-in. Aside from the tools, we also got a beautiful table cloth from my brother & Nadege, a really great kitchen compost bucket with a carbon filter lid (which actually works amazingly well to keep the smell from stinking up the kitchen), three beautiful serving dishes, several bottles of wine, and lots of cookies. Mark & Robin gave us a really lovely fruit basket full of fruit, chocolate, and wine. My mom gave us a gorgeous handcarved (by her) coat rack, which I will get some pictures of as soon as we decide where to put it up. We pretty much made out like bandits. :)

Christmas Day we had both of our families over to the house for a Christmas dinner & housewarming party. It was a good crowd, I think we had 19 people at the zenith. We had a lot of fun... most of those bottles of wine I mentioned above mysteriously disappeared! Dad brought over a few rounds of firewood, so we had our first fire in the new woodstove. It really cranks out the heat, we actually had to open some windows.
As seems to happen at every party, everyone congregated in the kitchen. Luckily, we designed it for that. :)

Dad also brought us a little tree, so we decorated it up. My mom (center) and auntie Pam (her sister) had fun with the assortment of ornaments. Many of them are from when I was a little kid, and there was a lot of speculation about which ones I made by myself, and which ones I had "helped" to make. That's my uncle Harvey (Pam's hubby) in the background, getting the next ornament ready.
The cats thought the tree was pretty cool, sort of a giant cat toy dispenser. Several glass ball ornaments met with a tragic fate. Turns out they just don't hold up to much swatting around the floor... Iggy says "Christmas Scrishmas. When do I get some salmon?"