A Creative Mind At Work

windowpainting

This time, I’ll mow better. I’ll try to maximize the long, straight runs and minimize turns. Even though we made a triangular set of beds in our yard and interspersed fruit trees and a chicken enclosure, I can start at the top of the yard and mow diagonally to the bottom. Whoever wanted curving, asymmetrical yard designs (me) had never used a riding mower. The geometry of this mowing seems incompatible with efficiency, but by the time I’m done, all of this grass will be shorter.

Riding mowing must have some tricks; I just don’t know them. I think I’ll actually start at the other top of the yard and mow horizontally, then vertically for a bit, just to trim around the rectangular chicken fence, and, while I’m heading this direction, I’ll shave down those burdock on the path to the compost. As long as I can make this U-turn, I won’t have to reverse, which disengages the blades and interrupts my Zen I’M SO CLOSE IF I JUST TURN HARDER. Nope. So, I’m still getting the feel of this turning radius—no harm done, just reversing.

Back to the long diagonal, I’m humming along now. In fact, I’ll just bump up the speed here to get done faster. There does seem to be a bigger change in speed between gears five and six than there was between four and five. Now every jiggly part of my body is flapping around erratically and making me giggle. Also, the ruts and bumps are tossing my bottom around in the seat—hilarious.

I’ve just realized I forgot my ear covers, but I guess they wouldn’t fit with my big floppy sunhat anyway, so basically I’ve chosen hearing impairment over skin damage. Ear plugs, though, would work, if I could find WHOA THAT WAS A NEAR MISS. I’ll slow down here.

BuffyandbushesofhateAt the end of this long diagonal strip, I’ll mow the perimeter slowly so I’ll have a buffer and not run anything over, like the only time I drove a riding mower as a kid and sent it straight up my Grandma Landis’s lamppost, much to her amusement. I wonder when our kids will start mowing. Oh, I missed a parallelogram-shaped patch over there. I’ll get it later.

On the other side of our new fence, the cows are grazing shoulder-high in grass—so lovely to watch cows and hear their teeth tearing the grass, if I could hear anything over this mower. They even eat poison parsnip, those amazing cows. If only they could eat our thorny hedge, which I call the Bushes of Hate, since weeding around them earlier gave me a thorn splinter that kept hurting in the same way that festering hatred pains the person who carries it embedded inside them, which makes me think that Donald Trump must be suffering horribly from all of his hate, unless he is so soulless that even the hate is simply a giant, asinine act for WHERE AM I GOING?

Mowing over here behind the barns was not the plan today. I’ll head back towards those long, efficient rectangles. And how did I leave all of those unmowed triangles over there?

Trianglebeds

Stellasthumbsup