Thursday, March 08, 2007

Tales of the Homeowner: Yard Work

Last night, I went out to Lowes (shocking, I know). With the help of Mom and The Boyfriend, we picked up my selected patio furniture set and brought it home, but not before stopping by BD's for some tasty Mongolian BBQ. Yum!

Today, after much coaxing to myself, I got out of bed and began to get down to business. I unwrapped and unpacked all the pieces to my set. The chairs didn't need assembly, but the table did, as did the umbrella. So, armed with the purple boonie hat and a wrench, I assembled said patio set in less than an hour.

Feeling empowered, I fired up the lawnmower and proceeded to mulch two years worth of dead leaves in my backyard. The Boyfriend boasted the lawnmower came with a two-start guarantee. If it took more than two pulls to start it, then they would fix it or replace it at no charge. True to his word, it started up the first time, every time.

And so I mulched. And mulched. And mulched. Then, I attached the bag to the lawnmower and tried to collect the spoils. I filled up five big 30 gallon lawn bags before calling it a day. While the mower does a stellar job of mulching and picking up leaves, it sucked at picking up those little prickly balls that fall from my two largest trees. Literally, hundreds, if not thousands of these offensive little bastards cover the yard. The mower would zing those things across the yard with such force, Sam hid under the BBQ grill until I was finished mowing. I fear that I am going to be reduced to raking the entire yard anyway to pick up all the little balls, which is what I was hoping to avoid in the first place.

I heard there might be some rain tomorrow, which is good because my afternoon activities have left a fine layer of leaf dust covering the entire neighborhood. I've inhaled so much of it, I will be coughing up black loogies until Cinco de Mayo.

As a reward to myself for all my hard work, I made an enchilada casserole.

Tomorrow night, I return to work. I have been entrusted with an orientee, so I hope I don't scare her away. She's pretty smart, and I think she will be a good nurse. Now, if she can get over the fact that the entire night shift is a herd of perverts just waiting for that sexual harassment lawsuit, then she's golden!

5 comments:

"The D" said...

When I first bought my house I could not wait to get started on my yard work. I was so PUMPED about it!! Now I just loath it. I need to find a some kid to do it.

You too will soon come to hate it!

thedirtyknitter said...

beware of those spikey balls
first time we fired up our brand new mower at our first house 6 yrs. ago - one of those damn balls got caught in some belt - ripped it in half - the mower's never been the same - now we rake. all those little balls. they S.U.C.K. but are funky to take photos of.

Faith said...

I have a walnut tree. Two of them, if you count the one in the neighbor's yard that hangs over the fence partially into my yard. I've already grown up knowing that those spiky ball things are no good, as are carob pods (they STI-IIINK! Plus they look like poo lying all over the place after they fall out of the tree), and now I know about walnuts. Never, ever buying another house with a walnut tree in the yard ever. Never ever. HATE the walnut trees. And if you think a spiky ball thingy being flung by the mower is scary, you should see a walnut fly when it gets caught just right. Dented my house with one once...

And at this point, after 3 springs and summers of doing it all myself, I've hired a yard specialist to help me with my gradually uglyfying lawn (thank you crabgrass. By the way, you SUCK!), and a landscaper to help me with the flower beds and who also mows the lawn for us, as well as deals with leaf clean-up in the fall. It's worth it, I realize now. (But I don't have a lawn-mower like yours to do the leaf clean up. If I did, I might still do that myself, at least...)

Xavier Onassis said...

Heather, Heather, Heather. What am I going to do with you?

Remove the word "rake" from your vocabulary right now. Replace that word with "undocumented Mexican". Just kidding Tony!!

Seriously, what you want is a leaf blower. But one that also sucks. Let me 'splain.

In leaf blowing configuration it generates a hurricane force stream of wind. It will blow those leaves AND the little spiky balls (and Sam) wherever you want.

In suckage mode, you can suck up the leaves, where they pass through a mulcher and get deposited in an attached back which can be emptied into the big papr bags that get hauled off.

Cool new toy, leaves and spiky balls gone, no raking or INS agents involved, another problem Xavierized.

Now about those cookies....

Well Hell Michelle said...

My husband and I live at the bottom of a hill. Leaves blow down the street and end up in our yard, so we fill over 50 yard bags with leaves every fall. Gotta love home ownership, right? :)