Little Brick Houses for You and Me: The Yard

Hello...It was pretty warm out today (the Weather Channel said 78 degrees) which is about 40 degrees warmer than it's been for about 2 weeks and warmer than it will be until next spring most likely. In every yard on the street, people were outside mowing and getting their yards in order. I pulled the frozen flowers and tomato plants out of their pots and Justin mowed and sprayed the yard with weed killer to prepare for next spring.

The yard is nice. It is narrow but deep and has a small uphill slope in the back. In the front there is a nice little flower bed along the front walkway. The yard has been neglected except for basic mowing because the previous owner was elderly and unable to do alot of yard work. The flower bed was full of some sort of spreading perrenial which was not very pretty and was spreading into the grass and even into cracks in the sidewalk and driveway. (The way that some plants can survive amazes me! Ask my mom about our "big yellow flowers" on the farm! We built an addition over them and they just relocated themselves and started growing around the addition.)

I'm glad Justin actually takes pleasure in mowing and yard work. In this respect, we grew up in different worlds. On the farm, and I know this is not uncommon on many farms, the yard work was the job of the women and children of the house. It was always one extra job that my parents could barely keep up with and that could get out of control fast. (I believe my dad once called it "a hay meadow" when it was reaching an out of control length).

The man mowing the lawn is a stereotype of the past, but I don't usually see such a division except on farms and I also don't know many kids from cities who drive lawn tractors or even use push mowers when they are in elementary school. I don't think I've ever seen my dad on our small John Deere lawn tractor, even though I know he used to take care of the yard in our past lives before the farm. As soon as we moved there, my mom took over the yard work that had been done by my Grandma. She grew up in town and had never mowed during her youth. As children, as soon as we were heavy enough to activate the blades, we were mowing too. (My brother was enthusiastic about this, my sister and I were indifferent. Also, I wasn't very good at making a nice "circle around the house" pattern during my early years.) That grass grows uncontrollably in the summer without fertilizer, sprinklers, aeration, edging or any other kind of maintenance. The dog of the moment always learns to take its bathroom breaks somewhere else (the woods?) so that doesn't stop it either. If it rained alot. . . ugh. . .the bane of my teenage existence. I will admit, it sure looks nice when it is freshly mowed and cut grass is one of my favorite smells!

When I was about 14 or 15, I learned how to drive the "H", an old Farmall tractor with a mower attached that we used to mow the larger farm yard around the machinery buildings. That part of the yard was an endless 3 hour job involving circling bins, avoiding parked machinery and mowing close to a row of lilac bushes that attract alot of bees (yikes!). The mower was tank-like in its movements and by the time the job was done my hands tingled from the vibrations, my ears rang and usually my hair a tangled nest of leaves, bugs or branches or some combination of them. The worst was when those weird tree worms that dangle from the trees on silk strings were having a cycle. Ewwww. . . I will admit, though, that driving this mower was a good upper body workout. I will also admit, and I'm sure most mowers have experienced this, that seeing your progress gives satsifaction.

This is a photo from the Internet, not the actual one we used at the farm. This one's not even a mower! I always thought the bouncy seat was a fun!

On another topic, Allan is doing good. He is adjusting nicely and loves to nap and snuggle. It is actually very cute and irrisistible. I still worry about leaving him alone for periods of time during the day and also at night. I feel better every day though. This weekend, every time we left and returned, we found him lounging on the ottoman. On Friday I found him stuggling in a sweatshirt of mine I had left on the couch. Last night, Justin checked on him about 1/2 hour after we had "put him to bed" in the basement and he was sleeping in his cat kennel that has his cute little baby blanket the Humane Society sent him home with. That made me very happy to know that he sleeps at night and isn't scared! We have tried leaving the basement door open at night so he can roam (don't worry, the basement is finished and normal. . . it's not like a dungeon basement.) However, he cries outside our bedroom door and if we let him in he charges around the room and purrs really loud and prevents us from sleeping. I think the separation is good because I don't want a overly needy cat!