Chalking up the "firsts"

There are a number of things you don't realise when you are a "town mouse who has become a country mouse". The big lesson this weekend is how much grass we produce from 7 lawns......yes you did read that correctly. Thank goodness the neighbour's cattle eat our paddock for us!

We cut the grass before we went away a week ago. I joked when returned, two days later, that we would need to mow it again, pronto. Our ride on mower died a few months ago, and it was prohibitively expensive to replace. So after a lot of research we bought a self propelled upright mower. Now that is all fine and dandy, but you have to stop EVERY STRIP to empty the bucket of cuttings. We started to bag it into huge bin-liners. But after 20, when we hadn't made a dent, so I suggested we pile the cuttings onto our tarp then drag it to the corner of the garden near the paddock.

Again, all fine and dandy until you realise WHAT THAT WEIGHS. Now given that my weight lifting days were over 10 years ago, and that my husband weighs 20kgs LESS than me and is 12 years older, we hardly made the best dray team to drag that puppy 200 metres. So we did several more afternoon tea trips to as many cows as we could, got two more huge bin liners full, then did a reasonable slave pull over the lawn, me singing the "Song of the Volga boatman" under my breath.

It is now time for coffee on the verandah, perhaps with some orange and coconut cake to replenish the calories I just burned off.