Sunday, April 25, 2010

Lawn Ranger

Saturday morning saw the delivery of our riding lawn mower. Yup, it's a John Deere. The company gets lots of recommendations. A random worker at Home Depot just bought the same model and loves it. The salesman said bad things about the similarly priced other brand. The delivery guy swears by the company. I drove it around a bit, then mowed a bit. Carrie and I picked up some of the sticks and pine cones and I mowed some more. Carrie is already talking about getting attachments for it.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Fire Pit Stop

We're planning on a visit to Home Depot today to buy a lawn mower. While the 3.67 acres we own isn't all lawn, enough of it is that we want to get a riding lawn mower. It may cut down on some of the work, but it's still going to be a lot more than we had to do with the yard in Arizona. We'll be doing a lot of picking up of debris first. Pine trees, of which we have quite a few, shed a lot. Not just pine needles, which we'll want to move to keep both the grass and mossy areas alive, but pine cones, twigs, and branches. Pines are very brittle creatures with pieces constantly breaking off from temperature changes or just high winds. I've tried to do a little bit of picking up almost every day when I walk Pandora around the yard, but in spite of the accumualtion you see in the pic above, there is a lot more to gather. Like the fallen trees. And pine doesn't do well as home heating wood as it burns too hot and fast. We'll have plenty of other fallen trees to use for that once we have the wood stove set. We'll need to get a burn permit (good for one day or one weekend) to use that fire pit though. And we'll undoubtedly need to do it several times.
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Also at Home Depot, we want to get some hardware to mount wall shelves in the studio. We still have a lot of stuff yet to be put out. And after helping Kemmer with her spring cleaning, we ended up with more books that need to be put somewhere.
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And while we're looking around the store, maybe some adhesive to try putting the floor tiles back down in Ross's room in the basement now that the repair work is done.
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Creative things have not been a high priority, but I've done some envelope painting for the upcoming Sunday Funnies postage stamps, but I've already mentioned that. I'm also working on a mini-comic with somebody else's characters. I hope I'll have more to report on that soon.
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And we're both working overtime at our jobs.
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Sunday, April 18, 2010

Typical Maine Weather


Last weekend was warm and sunny, shirtsleeve weather. This Saturday we wake up to find it snowing with three inches of accumulation already on the ground.
With no wind and lots of sheltering trees, there are areas you can see the grass that has already grown enough this year to need mowing right next to the covered trees.
Welcome to Maine.