Pruning, Mowing and Shaking Your Guts to Smithereens

Here is my tip of the day: If you value your internal organs, don't run a Bush Hog over a field that has previously been mowed after a rain by a tractor.

I think my boobs lost a pound each. My stomach ate my esophagus, and everything was snogging my diaphragm.  For hours and hours and hours. (I've been watching Torchwood from the BBC lately if you're wondering where snogging came from. Although, my Brit friend Carol, my age, says it's an old slang.) If I didn't already think I was drain bamaged, it'd probably be a good idea to make sure I didn't rattle it.

If you value your pocket book, don't try to fill the gas tanks on a Bush Hog.  I put 6 gallons in it today (it holds 10), and it was $24.03. Criminy.  The reason I mention this, besides just griping about the cost of gas, is because Joe chewed me out Sunday for finding a reason everyday not to do what I knew was needed, i.e., mow the lawn.  What Joe can't comprehend is how much it costs to mow 7 acres, and that's why we're (I'm) not mowing so frequently.

Well, anyway, it stayed around 80°F today. Since I can now tolerate that temperature better, it was time to (sob) leave the A/C and do stuff outside.  Above 90°F isn't a temp I've come to adapt to, so I've been putting off things for two weeks now. Today I pruned trees and mowed.

The first one to get the stiff pruning was a tree with leaves rather like holly leaves.  Why on earth Joe put that behind the workshop, I have no clue.  Why on earth he let it grow like he did, I'll never know.  Anyway, I attacked it with a vengeance this morning.  About 1/4 of the way around, there was Joe wanting to help pick up the trimmings.  Nice help.  While we took a break later, he told me he thought about taking it down about two years ago. Sure wish he would have.  There are quite a few bushes and stuff I'm getting ready to attack and take down around here.  I swear everything he put in lately has thorns on it.  No usable fruit, just thorns.  Try mowing around that!

Since I'm smoking my own bacon now, when I trimmed one of the fallen-over-apple trees, I put the trimmings in a pile near to the old burn pile at the end of the field.  It's so nice to have a helpful father. He so very kindly put them all on top of the ashes of the old burn pile. Sigh. Moving them off the ashes gets put on a later to-do list.

I was working the Bush Hog back down the tree line at the back of the property. It's slow going because I'm trying to edge it into the thicket/primeval forest as far as it will go without piercing my heart with limbs or tearing my legs off with thorns. As I reached the 3/4 mark, I looked back, and there was Joe tugging on a dead 8-inch diameter, 20-foot-long limb still stuck in the tree from which it broke. Sigh. Standing right there underneath it and pulling for all he was worth - at 90 years old and 125 pounds. Fate was nice to him today, and he didn't succeed in budging it.

Once I get through with this post, I'm going to google making apple juice and see if there's an easy way to utilize these puny June apples for apple juice.  LOL.  That makes me think of my neighbor in Oak Ridge 23 years ago.  Doreen was from Canada.  To her, they were July apples.  I remember us laughing about it one day after I brought back a bucket of Joe's apples from the days when the trees actually produced good apples.

It's a pity he let the trees go to pot.  Apparently, a well-cared-for apple tree can produce apples for a century.  Maybe this summer I can get some pruning done and return a few of these to better health.

Tomorrow I can finally go get the flat tire on my car replaced. One of the sitters is going to come over around 10:00 a.m. and sit with the parents for awhile.  That way I can take a break and get to Paducah for a bit. Right now, though, I'm so tired, I can't remember why it was so important I do that.

I'm going to sign off here, take a shower, google apple juice, watch an episode of Torchwood, and drool over Capt. Jack, (John Barrowman) Cya!