First Fruits

My pepper plants got started early.

The bell pepper plant is one that the Girl had kept alive all year. I learned something – bring the plants in and use them again next year.

That banana pepper was awesome in a salad. Peppery.

Yesterday, it was looking like rain. My app said it was going to rain lightly in 38 minutes. I figured I’d mow the back yard, then run. You can run in the rain, but you really shouldn’t mow in it. So I got that done:

It’s not a great lawn. But it’s better than none, which is what it was when I moved in. It was mostly weeds and dirt. Even though the whole lawn takes me less than an hour, I knock out the front lawn one day. Then do the back the next. That way, it’s only 20 minutes or so. Typically I do that after working out, since I’m sweaty already.

I got back in after mowing, and the weather app said it wasn’t going to storm until 2pm. Sweet. I geared up and headed out for my run. Lap #1, it was sunny but clouding up. Lap #2, I got pummeled. It wasn’t “light” rain. Lap #3 and up? Sunny and hot. Turns out, the first look at the weather app was right. The second was a sucker punch. Whatever.

It pays to follow the weather. Because if you don’t, you’ll be cutting hay after a few days of rain.

I’d love to pass this old man knowledge to the neighbor and the other millennials in the neighborhood. They let the lawn go wild, then suffer mowing it with their electric mowers. Take the neighbor, for instance:

That’s a day after he mowed it. Most of it. You see, homey has an electric mower. I want to say a Wen. It’s clearly the cheapest one he could find. The poor thing suffers. You see, those mowers are made for you to mow once a week. Not once a month or longer. It’s an electric mower, not a bush hog. And, he doesn’t own a trimmer, so the grass is lying over the curb like bangs on a girls hair.

It’s painful to hear the mower bogging down. He’s got it in mulch mode. I’m not sure it even has a bag or side discharge. The poor lawn gets mauled. Clearly, the cut grass gobs up the works and prevents a complete, clean cut.

I don’t think he cares. Nor, I think, do the other six Somalis living there. But he’s far from the only one. I reckon a third or so do this. Let it get out of hand, then scalp the thing. My old neighbor back in Richardson did this. Made no sense. I pointed out that my St. Augustine was reaching out and growing in his front lawn. That if he raised the blade, watered, and mowed consistently, he’d have a rocking front yard in a year or so with nearly zero effort.

It’s far, far easier to pick a day of the week, or two, and mow then. I generally do Wednesday and Thursday evenings, first the front, then the back. And as it gets miserable hot and dry, like this week, I raise the blade maybe 1/2″. I want to leave enough green for the plant to grow. I want the Bermuda I planted (and the St. Augustine in the front that magically appeared) to spend it’s energy sending runners and spreading rather than recovering from a scalping.

I like heading into the weekend with the lawn mowed. That leaves me time for other projects, as well as extra walking time for the dogs. It’s even better when Friday through Sunday they are calling for sporadic storms. Is there any better feeling than having your lawn mowed when it starts raining and will rain off and on the next few days?

Meh. Old man things.

Now that the lawns done, I should get a cooler and a lawn chair to sip cool drinks and grumble at the foreigners next door.