Mowin, Blowin and Growin

It's been quiet on this blogspot lately. Most of my energies have gone into the recent newsletter/membership-renewal effort. With that in the mail, I am back to blogging!



Today was windy.

d., c. and I were supposed to go to the skyway this morning but with winds blowing 15mph at 7am it seemed kinda pointless. Rather than waste a beautiful day (ok, it wasn't good for flying but it really was beautiful), I packed the mower in the Element and headed east.



You should probably know that mowing 16 acres with a 6.5HP Toro 22" mower is not the most fun you can have on a beautiful Sunday. Lounging in the pool, reading a good book and grilling a decent lunch sounded like a lot more fun. But, it did have to be done and I really wasn't going to mow all 16 acres, just the 2 that we fly from.



Now, I said that "I packed the mower" but I didn't tell you the detail that goes into this. Since this mower is used on our lawn, we are not allowed to use the same blade that does the lawn for mowing the field. Before I could pack the mower, I had to sharpen the "field" blade, remove the "lawn" blade and swap the two.



Doesn't sound too tough but it does take time. Not as much time as unpacking all of my flying equipment to get enough room to load the mower. The Element typically holds: My motor, a windsock, a lawn chair, a case with my helmet, two wings, a duffel bag with beach clothes (bathing suit, towel, slaps, tank top), a backpack with winter clothes (sweat shirt, flannel shirt, a couple of jackets, socks, underwear, long pants), another backpack with summer clothes (shorts, t-shirts, underwear, socks), boots, an umbrella, a camera, a rubbermaid case with tools, cleaning supplies, oil, and more.

So, all of this done, I head to the farm.



One of the first things I notice is that it is spring. The whole 16 acres is just blooming crazy. Purples, yellows, whites, reds. Flowers everywhere. And here I am with a mower to turn them all into a blaze of multi-color confetti.



The original work done on the farm included putting in a pond and using the dirt from the pond to raise a one-acre flying field 18". This worked perfectly but one acre is a little small for no-wind forward launches on hot, humid days. Part of my chore today was to increase the size of the flying field by one acre.



Flashback: several months ago a neighbor moved his cows into a fenced area that included our farm. He had called before doing this and, at the time, I thought nothing of it. Couple of cows, no problem. Boy, was I wrong. You see, we had planted new grass on our one acre launch pad (the rest of the several hundred acres was just weedy scrub) and when I showed up at the farm there were twenty nine cows standing on that one acre spot ... and they were not moving ... not even to relieve themselves. In the couple of days that it took to get a fence around the property, these animals had munched all the green grass and left enough dirt to raise the area a few inches.



I tell you this so that you understand that mowing is like running through a mine field. Between the cow patties and the palmettos, the lawnmower is being blown up every few seconds. The real problem is that with the height of the weeds in the area that I am expanding into, there is no easy way to tell what I am about to hit. So, I use the feel method...

When I see something, I raise the front of the mower and slowly lower it onto the object. If it makes a loud noise and goes up in a cloud of stinky dust then it was a cow pie. If it makes a loud noise and the mower stops, it was a palmetto.



Mowing took from 9am until 4pm and, even with the obstacle course, it did get pretty monotonous.



Since I do not carry an MP3 player when I fly, d. once asked me what I do when I am up there. Well, lots of times I just think about flying or about what I am flying over or where I am flying to (or from). Other times I do silly things like play word games: how many iterations will it take to get from the word "clone" to the word "ebola".

I tried doing that while mowing but it was too hard to concentrate between the exploding stink bombs and the exploding mower.



Other times I either sing songs I know or make up new words to familiar tunes. This was easy enough to do while mowing and I found myself singing a song from an old Flintstones cartoon:

"There's a place I know,
where the hipsters go,
called Bedrock...
Twitch, twitch, twitch"

Please don't ask me where that came from. It was just something that bubbled up to the top of the brain (probably caused by the heat) and just wouldn't stop. It wouldn't have been too bad except for two things:

1) those are the only lyrics I could remember
2) every time I got to the "Twitch, twitch, twitch" part, I had to stop and do a little Elvis hip shake...



Eventually that brain gas passed and I was free to think about other things. What was amazing to me was the land that I was tending. Sure, I could see the faces of the people driving by; I knew they were thinking that I was crazy using a 22" Toro push mower to mow 16 acres. And maybe I was crazy but what fun would it be jump on a John Deere and whizz around a few times and be done in 15 minutes? I was out here really enjoying myself. Enjoying the land. I mean, this land is my land...

Bad move!

After the Flintstones, it was probably best to stay away from music altogether but it was too late, This Land is Your Land had already started playing on my internal, digital, dolby, surround-sound, stereo system and, judging from the volume, it was going to be playing for a while.



Worst part was that I kept trying to sing along but I couldn't remember where the waters or the forests or the islands were. I was sure that there were mountains in there somewhere, too, but I just couldn't place them either.

I just gave up and let the tune run on and on and on... Eventually, I did begin to hear words but they weren't the original words, they went more like this:

"This land is d.'s land,
This land is D.'s land,
This land is MY land,
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,

It's used for flying,
When not too windy,
This land was made for PPG."

And, just like the Flintstones song, this one had a little dance. When I reached the "Ha-ha" part, I would stick out my tongue and tilt my head from side to side which made the "Ha-ha's" sound more like "Nah-nah's" but I guess that worked just as well.

This was not a good dance to be doing in a field full of exploding cow mess.



I eventually finished mowing and, while waiting for the mower to cool down, I pulled out my camera and went out on the other 14 acres and started photographing the flowers that had been the inspiration for my rendition of "This Land". The pictures included in this post are from this photo session.