Spring is sprunging again

I know that title's bad grammar, but I wanted to get both past and present tense in the same word. :)

It's been a busy spring around Walnut Hill. A few weeks ago I went over with my little gas powered push mower and tried to begin to catch up on the grass over there. I spent about an hour mowing, hit a small stump hidden in the grass and bent the blade. I only had a little more to do to finish that section so I kept going. The vibration snapped the bolt off which keeps the blade tight to the drive shaft though. So now I had a repair job.

With Eloise out of commission, I've now got TWO broken mowers on my hands. I basically decided to cut my losses and went out and bought a new mower the next day at Sears, a Snapper, self-propelled walk behind. After seven or eight hours I felt I had gotten things under control. On my arrival with the new mower however, I noticed that the glass in the back door had been smashed in (and out) but nothing seemed to be missing.

I called the state trooper, who showed up about 4o minutes and three phone calls later. ("Where is your house again?") I thought to myself, "I'm going to have a BBQ for the Chambersburg state police barracks sometime when the house is done. That way they'll know how to find my house in the future." :) He was a very nice man, went through the house and made sure there was no one inside lurking around. Gave me some ideas on what to do to prevent further problems in the future, etc.

I then set to mowing and later managed to make a cover for the opening in the back door to prevent further attempts at entry through that means. I'm going to have to make sure we board up any window openings when we remove windows.

By the time I'd done mowing, I felt like someone had been beating on my hands with a hammer. Between the rough ground and the small wheels on the mower, it really did me in there for a few days. But my body seems to have bounced back and we're getting the yard shaped up a little.

2008 Spring creeps along

My friend Dustin came over the other day after school and we put in two pretty productive hours. I managed to get about 2/3 of the tree trunks cut up that I'd taken down last fall. Dustin worked with the brush cutter and cleared the garden area, plus some land behind the house. The grass was above our knees and really tough and thick. Nice to know the soil can be so productive!

The other pictures have to do with the truck, which lost an alternator belt, and then the battery gave out. Hope that's the last repair, replacement I have to do with it for a while. I was really glad to have a second vehicle when it gave out on me.

My next task is to pull the starter motor off Eloise so I can hunt down someplace to rebuild it. With her up and running it will be MUCh easier to keep the weeds under control around the house. What took me seven hours would have taken less than two, I'm sure.

I'm also talking to a contractor friend of mine about coming in and doing the south face of the barn. I want to get that "locked up" sooner than I can get to it because there's another month left in school. I don't want to have folks wandering in and out of my workshop when I'm not around.

Hope you enjoy the pictures. More to come as time allows.

Moi