Happy mowing

Well, I've come full circle. I have not cut the grass for a LONG time, probably somewhere around 13-15 years. Funny how you miss things like that when you live in the city. It was something I'd have to do weekly basically from the time I was about 8 until I moved in my 20's.

I never minded it all that much, there's a certain zen aspect to it. I definitely appreciate a well cared for lawn. We never really had one growing up, it was a never a priority in our house. My mom and dad didn't spend a whole lot of time beautifying the yard since they didn't really like being around each other much. I guess maybe that's where I found I could do my part. Leave it to my parents who couldn't care less about yard work to somehow foster in me a sense of pride about my grass.

The lawn at our house will be a work in progress. It appears to have been mildly neglected over the years. It's really not all that bad but it needed to be cleaned up and needs some turfbuilder. It was difficult to get all the old debris and dead grass up. I did what I could with a rake, but I'm not happy with the results. I wanted to get a motorized de-thatcher to get rid of all that stuff but I never got to it. It seems to be growing OK though. The first mow was a little off the top, just to trim down the new growth. You don't want to go too low the first few times. Hopefully i can ghet some Scotts down before the end of the week.

Funny thing about the picture here. jake had been giving me a hard time all day with eating - he's basically refusing to eat what's being offered to him while thropwing tantrums and making a huge mess. Typicall one-year old stuff, but not what I want to be doing with myself all day. It was making me mniserable. Unfortunately, I took it out on Amy when she got home. We had a spat and she sent me away to go walk around or something. I decided it was time to mow. About halfway through, I catch a glimpse of her leaning out the office window taking pictures of me. She kind of made me laugh, but I was still pouting. She yelled something at me like "I saw you smile you jerk". Guess she got me.

Nothing like a good mow to get yer ya ya's out.

Yard work and electrical estimates

Not much going on at the homestead recently. Just doing some clean up work around the yard as the weather allows. The previous owner was an elderly lady who must have had a hard time keeping up with yard maintenance. We did learn from neighbors she was outside doing stuff and that she had landscapers come every now and again but most everything is overgrown and unkempt. The beds look like there are a few years of leaves in them, the bushes and shrubs were out of control and the fence between the front and back yard needs some serious help. We've already described the ivy removal in detail in a previous post.

I raked the lawn as best I could to try and get some of the dead grass and debris up to aerate the soil. We need to get some fertilizer and seed down to thicken and green it up. The lawn's actually not too bad but could be better. When I look at our neighbor's yards, I get a little sad since theirs are all so suburban-lawn perfect.What I'd really like to do is put that spreader that we haggled over at the house closing to use one of these days...

I'm also sorry to say there are no pics. Didn't think to break out the camera for such mundane activities and there's really no discernible difference in the appearance of the yard at this point.

In other news, we have now obtained three estimates for electrical work. We have been advised by my dad to get a fourth one since there was such disparity between all of them. Hopefully we can get all this ironed out soon so I can start fixing up the garage.

Hang in there for the next update, hopefully that one will be a little more exciting.

Hole in the ceiling

The day after the tank abandonment was March 28. We had a big one-year-old birthday party for Jake. All our friends came by and we had a regular rip roar.

Beforehand though, I needed to remedy the large-hole-in-the-ceiling-situation before guests began arriving. I managed to finish it up with a little help from Amy. We basically recycled an older fixture we had from our apartment in Brooklyn which we took with us when we moved. It's from Ikea but definitely fits our mid-century style well with it's perforated edge and diffused light.

Note final result below.