Landscaping

I love the way my yard looks with the grass freshly mowed, the weeds have all be obliterated and happy perky flowers line the sidewalk. Butterflies frequently seek out the nectar from the lantana and we have a little hummingbird husband and wife that love to eat at the feeder then rest for just a few minutes on the Japanese Maple outside my dining room window. From the very first moment that I put my hands in the dirt to plant my first petunias I fell head over heels in love with gardening. I seem to have inhereted my green thumb from my mother and great-grandmother. Plants just seem to do well for me. If something seems amiss I follow what my gut tells me and to my delight the sickly plant usually bounces back to life. With the exception of the poor little African Violet that had gnat fungus...UGH.

Since Tony is deployed the "pleasure" of mowing the yard has found it's way onto my list. Don't get me wrong. I like mowing the grass and I don't even mind doing the weedeating too. As a matter of fact, I enjoy this chore. It's wonderful exercise, and for a person that loves order it's awesome making the lines in the yard. However, power tools and I just don't gee-haw (as Nene would say). I spend the majority of the time with the weedeater on the ground trying to fix those dang neon green thready coil things. In this day and age with all of our technology that's the best we can do? Green plastic thread going around in a circle at 500 miles an hour is it? We put a man on the moon for crying out loud! So you can imagine my ultimate frustration when I am about 10 minutes away from being finished mowing my back yard when for seemingly not reason the mower starts shaking. I mean S-H-A-K-I-N-G! Then this little rubber black thing shaped like elbow maccaroni just sort of falls off. My first thought is; well that can't be good. I see where it fell off so I put it back on (after much struggle). Get the mower started and it's working just fine. The darn thing starts shaking again and the little black maccaroni falls off again. I will tell you this, this lawn equipment will not beat me! Two things may be happening very soon 1) I will do some googling and repair the lawn mower myself or 2) I will do some googling and TRY to repair the lawn mower myself only to have to go to Lowe's and purchase a new lawn mower. (I only hope I talk to Tony before he reads this.)