Spring Yard Work
by James Glaser
January 9, 2012

Yes, I know technically it is winter, but North Florida winters are more like late spring in most of the country. So, Wanda and I are doing our spring yard work or at least we got a start today.

Trimming trees and bushes, picking up broken branches and strings of Spanish Moss that have fallen, and having a good size bon fire made for a nice day outside. We still have to get all the leaves up, but we have some of the flower beds looking ready for planting, and the Garden is ready for tilling. The freezing cold snap this past week did nothing to my vegetables and herbs, but we might have lost a lemon tree.

The two of us have so many projects going that we sat down and wrote them all out, and now we are going to put each project on a little rectangle of paper and prioritize them. Then we will put them on a board and cross them out as we finish each. We did that last year, and we were pleasantly surprised how much we accomplished.

Here in Florida it is best to get as many of those outside projects done as you can while the weather is cool, because they sure get hard in the heat of summer.

We went up to Valdosta, Georgia, Saturday and bought a riding lawn mower. Now we don't use a rider to cut our grass. We use it to keep up the trails in our woods. Somebody gave us a sweeper to get up the leaves, and we need a riding lawn mower to pull it. We had a rider, but it was pretty old. One day the repair man told me that it was past its prime, and I would have to put in too much money to keep it up. We looked at Lowes, Home Depot, and Sears. We ended up buying a Craftsman at Sears. That is what our old one was , and the new one just seem to be a bit stronger than the others in that price range.

I have to tell you I have so much fun riding around on a mower. I take along a bottle of water and can spend hours making the trails just right. I just putt along and find it relaxing. Wanda says that riding the lawn mower is my "drug of choice", and she might be right. I thought I should get a small backhoe and something with a front end loader, but I really only need one for a few days. Better to rent one or hire somebody with one.

So, for the next few months we have our jobs all figured out. Wanda is fun to work with, and when we take a break we sit on our yard swing and relax and look at what we have accomplished. Nothing is better than living out in the country where you can make some noise whenever you want and where you have room to express yourself with the way you landscape.

I guess we must be doing it right, as the animals and birds seem to enjoy all of our projects.

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