On A Clear Day You Can See Forever

[ Our lawn mower trio]

May 14 – Recently did our first mowing of the season on April 24 after Dale got all three of the mowers ready. Beautiful patches of bluets all over the ground in spots. Dale did a lot of tilling after both of us had no success with starting the hand mowers. I had to give up finally and use the riding mower. Five or six hours and still had some to do. I got too close to the fruit tree area at one point and a branch of the apple tree knocked off my cap and my glasses, throwing them about 10 feet, but we didn’t know that distance when everything happened at once!

I continued to duck under the branches until I ended up on the other side of the tree. Before I told Dale, I hunted and hunted, first just standing up and bending down until I found that my legs and back weren’t too happy about that position. OK, down I went on my hands and knees, searching quickly at first then more slowly as I found nothing.

Now I KNEW my glasses had to be right around that tree, so I knelt on the outside, then reached across to the trunk, but became more and more discouraged as I found nothing I wanted to keep!

Finally, when I had to tell Dale about the problem, he came up from the garden where he had been tilling. How did he search? Just like I did, of course. What else would you do? OK, so he quit that and went back to the barn to come up with the big plastic lawn rake. He raked around the tree slowly, round and round, but Dale AND the rake never found anything!

[ Dale out by the mower ]

I had had enough of playing games with the apple tree, keeping secret the whereabouts of my glasses, so while Dale continued to search for them, I went back into the house, not being able to see as well as I could when I first started mowing.

About half an hour later, as I was working in the kitchen. I heard Dale come in through the open garage door. I greeted him with, “Well, you aren’t saying anything, which means that you have nothing to tell about my glasses. Sure wish you could have found them, both for the cost of another pair, and because I need to have them to do close-up work and I don’t feel like getting another pair.”

Just then when Dale stepped nearer I noticed a huge smile on his face. Well! I sure didn’t think that my losing those glasses was at all funny and was about ready to tell him that, when I noticed HE was wearing MY glasses! What a surprise.

Dale then said, “Come on out and I’ll show you where they were. When he pointed out the place, I could hardly believe it! The big old yellow mower sat all by itself several feet from the tree. A little farther on as Dale had scoured the area, he found my glasses, with a little green/yellow covering of the grass I had just mowed. A rich find at ten feet!

So that was six hours of mowing before time to get ready for supper. As if that were not enough for one day, I went outside after the meal to rake up the old stalks from the blackberry patch and the needles fallen from the evergreen trees.

And since I have to live up to the words my brothers always said to me, “Sis, you’ll never learn. If you didn’t try to do so much before you quit for the day, you would be a lot happier!” Well, these days, I am beginning to believe what they said so many years ago, really was true

[ Glasses found! ]

Perfect example. Would you believe that I lost my glasses once again? As I tried to finish up around the chestnut tree with its branches hanging low, off went my cap and glasses AGAIN, and I had to stop the mower so I could get off and do a little more hunting for the same things I had lost earlier in the day! Fortunately, I didn’t need Dale’s help this time as I found the glasses and cap near where I had stopped. Now it was really time to leave the yard and move into the house!

Yes, THAT was a busy but productive day. Before quitting for the day, Dale and I played several games of Rummikub, enjoying the fact that I could at least see the numbers on the tiles. And as I check what I’m writing on the computer, it’s nice to remember that I can see just as well as before that disgusting branch on the apple tree did what it could to make my day sad! – CHRIS