WordPress is being finicky about loading photos this week, so I will put off a post that needs illustration until I can wrangle it back into submission.
Our riding lawnmower (well, Paul’s riding lawnmower that lives here) is repaired and running. The battery was low and it wouldn’t turn over. Paul charged it and showed me what I was doing wrong. Then he decided it needed to be run for a while, but Milli and I went off to my kitchen for tea and chat. Paul mowed all around the barn and gardens, after he replaced the belt on the mower. Oh. That too?
These good people are very tolerant of my inability to manage machinery. The tiller – broke a shear pin and replaced it wrong. The mower – ran the battery down and popped the belt. The water pump – well, that wasn’t my fault but who knows; maybe I attract lightning strikes.
We are still hacking at the second garden plot. My neolithic garden is very slowly turning into plantable soil. I put in some peas and beets today. Nicholas pounds at the sods and lumps, I pick out the rocks and rake smooth the worst of it, then literally sprinkle or shove some seeds in. Nice modern gardens prepared properly iwth machinery have straight rows, and the plants are tidy in their soldier-like columns. My garden is full of hills and wavy beds, with smatterings of plants coming up. Neolithic. We think of it as yet another one of my adventures in pre-iron age technology.
My Life and the History of the World 