No Excuse For Being Bored

I learned very early in life to never tell my mother I was bored, because if I did, she could always find something to occupy my time. And it was never anything fun. What’s fun about wiping down the furniture with Pledge or washing the windows? Don’t bother trying to think of an answer to that question because the answer is nothing is fun about it! At least not when you’re a kid.

It’s the same thing living on acreage in the country. There’s no excuse for being bored, because there’s always something that needs doing. Yesterday was another beautiful day, with temperatures around 80, and we spent most of it outside. A while back I bought Terry a Honda FG110 gas powered rototiller to help her maintain the garden. It’s a small unit that will get between the rows of plants and between the individual plants themselves.  She had not had a chance to use it yet, so we took it out of the box, adjusted the handlebars, put in gas and oil, and it was good to go.

When I sent this picture to our daughter Tiffany, she said she wasn’t sure if Terry was enjoying herself or if she was getting her butt kicked. I told Tiffany it was a little bit of both. But the tiny little tiller does a pretty good job, and Terry is very pleased with what she’s been able to do with it in just a short time.

While Terry was working in the garden, I got on the Kabuta tractor again, and using the bush hog, I mowed the area that was left in the pasture that I ran out of daylight for the other day. Then I mowed along the fence line and along the south side perimeter road. There’s a lot of land back there and the road was getting overgrown. I started to mow one area where there was a lot of high grass, but noticed flattened areas in the grass where deer have been bedding down, so I left that for them.

When our son Travis and I pulled out the fence posts along the north side of the property we left all of the high weeds and bushes along the fence line. Much of it is higher than the tractor and I decided to tackle it and see what the bush hog would do there. The first step was just making a couple of openings through it, kind of testing the water, or I guess maybe I should say the weeds. Either way, the mower went right through them without a problem.

So I started cutting them down behind the barn and opened the road up, which had completely overgrown.

The one area I had not tackled yet was the hillside along the barn road that leads up to the pasture. There’s a drainage ditch across the bottom of it and it’s rather steep, so I started at one end going up and down and got about half of it done before the bouncing involved with it started making my back hurt. By then it was pretty late in the day, and I decided that I would finish the rest of it today.

Overall the place is starting to shape up and look pretty good. The things Terry put in her above-ground planters as well as the potatoes that she planted in two big plastic horse tubs are all looking very good. She also has quite a bit of zucchini and other things coming up in the garden. That’s kind of gotten away from her, between the combination of the heat, the ground fabric we had to pull up, and not feeling good after her exams at the Mayo Clinic earlier this month, but with the tiller she is getting it back into shape. We know it’s going to start getting too hot to do much outside soon, so we’re trying to get as much done as we can before that happens. As I said, there’s no excuse for being bored around here.

Today is your last chance to enter our Free Drawing for an audiobook of Crazy Days In Big Lake, the third book in my Big Lake mystery series. Everybody seems to have gone crazy in the little mountain community. Neighbors are threatening violence, eco-protestors are on the march, flower children are camping in the nearby forest, two of Sheriff Jim Weber’s deputies have gotten into a fistfight in the ButterCup Café, the grocery store manager has locked himself in his office and won’t come out, bears are chasing dogs into houses, and somebody has stolen the town’s mascot. As if that isn’t enough to deal with, a mild-mannered retired couple have shot an intruder during a home invasion. By the time this wild tale is finished, more blood will be shed and the good people of Big Lake will be left wondering just how well they really know their neighbors.

To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn this evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books and audiobooks to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – Work is precious, save some for tomorrow.