Ticks have been vanquished, spiders have been swatted, and the countryside (in my immediate vicinity) has been ever so slightly tamed.  Sort of.

When we bought our house, there were two riding mowers in the garage.  We asked for the super nice one in our offer, and the owner said she couldn’t give us that mower because it wasn’t hers.  It was borrowed.  We asked for the other mower and got it.

Turns out that she was borrowing the fancy mower because the other mower didn’t work.  It really didn’t work.  So Scott, being handy and mechanically-able, worked on the mower almost every night for over two weeks.  Granted, he was getting home late most of those nights, so “every night” meant for an hour or so each night.  It was still a good chunk of time.  At the end of those weeks, he had it running reliably again.  Tires were repaired, countless internal issues were resolved, a few parts were ordered and installed.  Bam.

He mowed for the first time a week and a half ago, and then the grass did what it does–it grew.  Darn grass.  You get it all nice and perfect (which it was, with diagonal lines across the front yard and everything), and then it grows and gets all shaggy again.  Scott taught me how to use the riding lawn mower, since I’ve only ever used the push variety, and yesterday was my day.  I was supposed to mow the side and back yard portions, which add up to about 2/3 of our 2.5 acres of grass.  We decided the front yard should be left to Scott, for the sake of everyone who has to drive by our house and see the yard.

And now, I’m proud to say that I did it.  Woohoo!  I was even feeling so good about my mowing skills that I went for the front yard.  There are a few scraggly sections, but I did it, and the yard looks almost as good when Scott mowed the lawn.  See:

 

True, the second photo was taken while I was trying to restart the mower after I ran out of gas.  The gas gauge isn’t super reliable, so I don’t feel terrible about that part of my technical issues.  And my lawn mowing pattern looks like a 5-year-old was mowing.  It starts out as relatively straight lines around the yard (mowing in a box shape, moving in so that each box is smaller than the last).  Then the corners get weirdly curved, like circles that go in farther than they should.  Then comes the shape that looks kind of like a kidney bean.  And finally, a figure 8 in the center of the yard.  With a few random spots that I went back and mowed again to get stragglers.  It’s beautiful, really.  It looks almost like abstract art.

I’m a long way from being an expert, but it is fun to tackle new home tasks.

 

Also, there are spiders all along the edge of our yard.  Spiders that build webs right in the path of the lawn mower.  I hope the neighbors see my excellent spider swatting technique someday.  It’s a sight to behold.

Also also, there was a black bear sighting two houses down from ours yesterday.  They saw a mama and cub together, meandering through the woods.  That’s pretty cool, if mildly intimidating.