Such a Fun Guy

 You might recall that we experienced that elusive weather phenomenon known as a sunny weekend. So, I set out to do what I had been unable to accomplish so far this year: I mowed my grass. Which in itself is quite an accomplishment. All the necessary criteria were met—I had the proper weather to facilitate mowing AND my schedule allowed for it And my mower had both gas and a fully charged battery. The two previous sunny days we had this season I was far away from my yard or busy with grandchildren. Hooray for me! Mark helped me clear a path to free my mower from the confines of its winter storage, and off I went, earplugs in my ears and a song in my heart.

Since it was the first mow of the season and my grass was moderately overgrown—and by moderately I mean there was no need for the bailer attachment—I was carefully navigating the first pass around the perimeter when an unexpected sight stopped me short. I disengaged the mower blades, dropped the transmission into Park, jumped off of the mower and went tearing around the back of the house to where Mark was quietly enjoying the afternoon.

“Come with me,” I said, and grabbed his hand, towing him out to the abandoned mower. There, just in a head of the front mushroom was a single, baby morel. 

 

We made all the appropriate Ooh-ing and Ahh-ing sounds one makes to a baby mushroom before carefully harvesting it. “Good thing I didn’t run over it,” I said and then blinked. Underneath the mower deck I could see two more mushrooms.

Mark and I froze in our tracks, like two soldiers who had blissfully skipped into the middle of a minefield, only to realize that the next step could mean death and destruction—or at least squishing of the delicious fungi, which would be a gourmand’s tragedy. 

I think it took us about 20 minutes to carefully sweep the area clean of the tender treats before we decided it was safe to move the mower. I returned to my interrupted chore while Mark carefully searched the backyard for more mushrooms.

And that’s the story of how I went mushroom hunting over the weekend, accidently, unintentionally-- but quite successfully. 

Ill Tempered Beast

Welcome back to this episode of Over My Garden Gate, in which we discover our plucky heroine isn’t quite a plucky as we thought.

Oh sure, she got on board the This Is a Serious Pandemic train early on and settled in for the long ride with nary a complaint, mostly. She had her snacks for the journey, and plenty of TP, and with that mess of curls she calls a hairdo who could tell she already overdo for a haircut in March? She packed her favorite soapbox and at every whistle stop along the way was happy to preach the gospel of Stay Home Save Lives.

When you shelter at home—who is going to see the whole hair mess anyway? Not to mention the later addition of masks—GENIUS! No haircut, no mascara—no problem! Put on a mask when you go out in public and voila! No one can recognize her! It’s like putting glasses on Superman—no one knew who he was! Secret Identity! Also, she stopped wearing contacts and only wore glasses—so exactly like Superman! Maybe she IS Superman!

Superman. Probably
Who can know?

It’s true, she had a brand-new grandson she hadn’t held since he was not quite a month old, and a slightly-used 20 month old grandson whose vocabulary was developing daily with out her there to influence it. But thank goodness for the invention of Snapchat and FaceTime! Our plucky heroine could receive multiple pictures of Baby Aiden in real time and do a nightly book club slash story time with John Boy Shane, and it was a lot to be thankful for. Word of advice? Toddlers shouldn’t be served wine in their sippy cups—but it’s totally fine for Nannas. Sippy cups save spills, amirite? Cheerios and string cheese are delicious snacks. It’s almost like being there!

Our heroine’s pluck took on some serious damage when one of her sons underwent emergency surgery mid hospital crisis, and no one could go visit him. But God is good--all the time--and her friends pulled her through; after a second hospitalization he was finally on the mend and Life in Lockdown continued on.

The sun was out, there was grass to mow and flowers to plant and multiple home improvement projects start—in a super plucky fashion, our heroine bravely started project after project without actually completing projects One, Three and Seven because—well, because she’s an idiot, but that’s a story for a different time.

But the wear and tear on her pluck became cumulative. And when the rains came, and day after day became darker, and soggier, her pluck went AWOL. Our heroine suddenly snapped one day last week and became an ill-tempered beast who could be neither soothed nor solaced, nor sung to. She stomped around the house, cursing the rain and the virus. She declared she was bored, and mad, and sad; she hated rain, threatened to break all her crayons, and run away from home. Did I mention it was raining? Still? Again? And that it would probably never stop? Ever ever ever? The cats sought shelter under the bed, and the neighbors vacillated between calling a Realtor or calling a Priest...and then the strangest thing happened...

Tune in to next week’s episode, where we discover the fate of our heroine. Does she get her pluck back? Or do the neighbors end up lighting torches and storming her castle? Does she get one of those cute little white jackets with the sleeves that buckle in the back?

To Do List, DONE

I’ve crossed my fingers and put all my energies into hoping for an early spring. Should that wish be granted, I’ll have a lot of tasks that need to be completed, ASAP. The best way I’ve found to accomplish that is to make a To Do List.

Some early spring chores I recommend doing now are: 1) Apply chicken poo to your flower beds. The fertilizer will make all your plants happy and vigorous-- applying it now means your neighbors will be that much less likely to share in the aromatherapy. 2) Give your motorized gardening equipment a tune up so all will be ready and operational when mowing season rolls around.

I can check Task Number Two off of my to do list already, as I accidently accomplished it last fall. My mower made the trip in to see the Mower Doctor because the spinnyroundythingy that drives the blades wouldn’t spinnyroundy unless you first shoved a stick in there and made it engage. Full confession: I did that a couple of times so I could finish mowing, but eventually that was too redneck, even for me, and I gave in and sent my mower Out Town to be repaired. And while they had it, might as well give the old girl the full spa treatment. Lawnmower tune-up: CHECK.

I’ve learned one key trick to having a To Do List full of TahDONE items—backfill your list. I will often have a to do list that at the beginning of the day looks like this: 1) Pay Bills on-line. 2) Fold laundry. 3) Clean cat box.

With backfilling my list at the end of the day, it looks more like this: 1) Pay bills on line. CHECK. 1A-infinity) Read All of Twitter. CHECK. 2) Fold Laundry. 2A) Reorganize sock drawer. CHECK. 2B) Discard old socks. CHECK. 2C) Retrieve old socks from garbage. CHECK.  2D) Make cat toy utilizing old sock, catnip, and dryer lint. CHECK. 2E) Play rousing game of WHEN SOCKS ATTACK with cats. CHECK. 2F) take catnap. CHECK. 3) Clean cat box. Not checked. Who has time for that? Look at all the OTHER STUFF I accomplished today! 4) Clean dryer lint trap. CHECK!

Backfilled properly, even the laziest of To Do lists and give you quite the sense of accomplishment.

The Off Season, Part 2: Sue Throws a Rigging Fit

Last time, I was telling you of my mis-adventures in gardening—specifically as they relate to mowing and my failure to PLAN AHEAD. Full confession? I might have thrown what used to be known as a “rigging fit.”

 On or about the third tablespoon of gas in the half-tablespoon tank of my push-mower—did I mention I was pouring from a five-gallon can? A full five-gallon can? --and/or the 482 time I’d had to restart my grass-choked mower, my inner logger came out; I muttered and stomped around, red-faced and steaming, smoke boiling from my ears. I kicked rocks. I kicked the ground, and I confess, Gentle Reader, that if I had had a lunch bucket I would have pitched it from the landing while turning the air blue with my heart-felt, fervent utterances. And I didn’t even HAVE a landing! No matter! Get me a lunch bucket and I will fling it! Oh, that was your lunch bucket? No matter! I will fling all the buckets! All, I say! 

By the time property values in my neighborhood had dropped significantly, and small children had been ushered safely indoors---and I was out of lunch buckets-- I finally calmed down. Four full years and five lawn mowing seasons have come and gone since that awful day in January and I can hardly blame Shane’s absence for my own inability to step up to the plate this season and problem solve the problem by—oh, I don’t know—PREVENTING IT.

That’s on me and I need to own it. And I probably need to replace the lunch buckets...what else? Apologize to the neighbors, pay for some pediatric ear-wash, make sure none of my “rigging fit” ended up on YouTube... I’m not exactly sure what the moral of my cautionary tale is—I only know that after I calmed down I went into the garage and my riding mower fired right up. 

Seriously. 

Look at me, sitting down, mowing grass.
What a concept!

It did.

Make of that what you will. I made hay while the sun shone.

The OFF Season

I like to think that gardening comes with multiple seasons: Pre-Season, The Gardening Season, Post Season, and The Off Season. In Pre-Season you take all the necessary steps for a successful garden: you plan, and dream, and look at seed catalogs. You think about what didn’t work out as well as you’d hoped and strategize ways to counteract the challenges. You buy seed and gas and fertilizer and wait for that long-awaited day of sunshine, so you can rush out and commence gardening.

Gardening Season has arrived! You plant plants! You buy more plants! You plant those! You mow the green-green grass, a favorite beverage in the cup holder! The sun shines, birds sing along with the musical metronome of the sprinkler, the air is sweet—you might even BBQ later!  Gardening Season is the Best Season!

In the Post-Season, you reflect on your harvest, tally your success and clean up your gardens. You tuck gardens in for winter, plant any bulbs you want to greet you next spring, dig up any dahlias or begonias you want to winter-over, put away hoses and tools. At some point, many people will service their lawn mowers. Or so I’ve heard. Because somewhere, in between the Post-Season and Pre-Season, is the Off Season. And that’s where I tend to be.

For me, there seems only to be two seasons: Gardening and Not Gardening and nary a thought of what I might do during the latter to make the former possible. It’s only when April rolls around and the sun comes out and I realize my grass is taller than my cats do I wonder if I have any gas in the mower...and something about an oil change, was it? Perhaps battery? Spark plug? Tune-up? So, in between rain showers, I listen to all the other mowers in my neighborhood fire up and as they begin to perfume the air with the scent of freshly mown grass, I go out and attempt to start my riding lawn mower. 

SPOILER ALERT: It doesn’t start. Even after days of being on the battery charger. I start the push mower. I begin to mow. SPOILER ALERT: Riding mower vs. Push Mower. 42” cutting deck vs. 24”; sitting down/cupholder vs. standing up/no cupholder, PUSHING; a gas tank that holds a GALLON PLUS of gas vs. a tank that holds approximately half a tablespoon. But I’m mowing!

SPOILER ALERT: my happy thoughts do not last.

Because SUN

I gotta make this short, the sun is shining and I must make hay. Or, rather, prevent it.

I went out to start my newly recharged RIDING lawnmower only to find that the plugs were fouled. Full disclosure: I don’t know that the plugs were fouled, I only know that the mower turned over but wouldn’t catch. “Fouled plugs” are a thing I once heard about, the motor wouldn’t catch, ergo—fouled plugs.

 Swearing at the mower didn’t seem to fire it up any better. I even tried kicking a tire—a complete waste of energy, it accomplished nothing except to assure me that the tire I kicked wasn’t low on air. If kicking a tire will actually start a mower, I very clearly kicked the wrong one. And all the while the sun was out and the grass was growing...and growing...

Desperate times call for desperate measures. So, I turned to the push mower. Three acres of rapidly growing grass and a PUSH mower. Yes. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Full disclosure, part deux: technically, it’s not a “push” mower, it’s a “walk-behind” mower, but THREE ACRES people! I believe that size multiplies effort needed. And certainly, the whining.

At least the weather was gorgeous. So gorgeous in fact that I opted for shorts and a tank top. Not to worry, I used heavy duty sunblock, in a multiple layered application that I find to be highly effective. First, apply a heavy layer of 30 SPF sunblock. Since I was PUSH---did I mention the push part already?-- mowing, I used a “sweat proof” type. Then, thru out the afternoon, I applied multiple layers of grass clippings, dust and pollen over the top, resulting in a sun protection factor of 100. Trust me, this combo guarantees a coating that will make your skin impervious to sun.

 Which is a good thing. Because the sun is still shining and the grass is still growing, and I need to keep mowing.