Tag Archives: mowing

Kiss my grass…

July 24, 2023 Rivergirl 26 Comments

Now that the driveway replacement is complete, it’s time to battle the ditch from Hell.

This feature has been the bane of my husband’s existence ever since we moved to this house 21 years ago.

It runs the full length of our property on both sides of the driveway and was dug (illegally as it turns out) by the previous owner.

Our neighbors on the left don’t have a ditch.

Our neighbors on the right don’t have a ditch.

The farm across the street doesn’t have a ditch… but we have a ditch that over the years has been caving in, filling up with gravel and broken road tar and becoming a nightmare to mow, weed whack and kept clean.

My husband had the grass growing all the way to the road until the town in their infinite wisdom decided to scrape the sides down to gravel last year.

This increased the caving in by making it more unstable to snow plows and mail trucks that ride on top.

Needless to say we’d had enough of maintaining said ditch and asked the driveway company what it would cost to lay perforated pipe the entire length and cover it with dirt we could seed and mow a flat lawn all the way to the road.

We were told nothing could be done until we had a signed permit. So we went to the town… who told us to go to Maine public works.

So we went to Maine public works… who told us to go the state DOT.

So we went to the state DOT… who told us to go to the town.

After a week and a half of this insanity I wanted to repeatedly stab myself with a fork… but my husband figured marching up to the capitol and finding the head man would be more productive. So that’s what he did. He found the guy who’s in charge of every single road in the state. He explained the situation and arranged for this overworked fellow to visit our property in order to give permission for us to fill in our ditch.

Head guy came, head guy looked, head guy listened, and said he had to talk to legal.

A week later head guy called with a denial.

To which we wanted to say…

The lame excuse he gave was this…. if he granted permission for us to fill in the ditch, who’s to say the next owner wouldn’t want up dig it out again.

What the …. what?

Who cares!

To pacify my irate husband, he agreed to visit us again with a proposal that the state could come and dig out the ditch, build up the sides and make it more stable… at their cost. Which sounds good in theory but in reality would just put us back to where we were 21 years ago with a steeper ditch that’s harder to keep clean. And I hate to say it, but we aren’t getting any younger.

Head guy is coming back next week.

I’ll keep you posted.

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I used to have a garden.

June 27, 2022 Rivergirl 31 Comments

I used to have a beautiful perennial garden in our back yard. It was a lovely little brick bordered bed and over the years I filled it with a varied assortment of colorful flowers.

There was purple lupine.

The harder to grow white lupine.

And some fabulous red bee balm.

A few years in, a little apple tree seeded itself and since I didn’t have the heart to pull it up… it grew happily alongside the phlox, black eyed Susans and Shasta daisies.

My garden made a wonderful foreground in photos of the big barn construction progress.

And I had many happy years of bright blooms and vases full of freshly cut flowers.

Until my husband bought the beast.

The monster zero turn lawn mower that flings grass clippings and weeds what seems like 100 miles. No matter how many times I begged him to reverse direction and steer clear, over the years my bed was overtaken by weeds. No matter how many of the damn things I pulled, dug up or chopped… I couldn’t contain the growth and they slowly started choking out my flowers.

By 2019 I gave up.

I bought numerous bags of mulch.

Weed whacked everything down to ground level…

And covered the whole thing, leaving only the tree. And while I missed my riotous blooms, the aesthetic was pleasing enough to satisfy.

Of course the husband and his big orange beast kept throwing grass in the bed so I kept getting down on my hands and knees to weed. Until I blew out my knee in the fall of 2020 and could no longer crouch or kneel without considerable pain.

So I gave up again, and now? It looks like this.

A large brick bordered bed of weeds. It disgusts me on a daily basis but I vowed not to touch it again until a new, taller stone border could be built. And now that the husband is retired with nothing but time on his hands….?

To be continued….

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It’s exhausting, but oh so satisfying.

June 7, 2021 Rivergirl 30 Comments

When you have a lawn as big as ours, mowing can be a two day affair. The husband and I tag team it… me on the push mower for the front lawn, sides, upper back and around the barn…. him on the tractor for the large expanses. Did I mention we have a veritable mowing fleet?

While his sections are bigger, mine are actually harder because I make a point of never blowing grass in the flower beds.

That mulched section under the tree used to be filled with perennials…

Until the husband flung so much grass in there all the flowers got choked out and I got tired of breaking my back weeding. But I digress..

After mowing comes trimming.

And trust me, there’s a lot of that. I just added these two beauties to my stone wall bed…

And filled the baby barn’s bed with its annual marigolds. I added some tickseed (coreopsis) as well, but I’m afraid it might get too much sun… so it’s success has yet to be determined.