So, on my lunch break, I ran out to the Mart of Wal and used my $50 "gift card" (from the tax preparer). Bought "storeables" - tp, paper towels, laundry soap, that stuff you use up, don't want to run out of, and that doesn't go bad on the shelf. And also a head of cauliflower and bag of potatoes; I want to try doing that "mashed cauliflower and potatoes" I've read about. The last cauliflower soup was pretty good, and mashed potatoes fixed without salt aren't much good, so I think maybe mixing potatoes and the more strongly-flavored cauliflower (and maybe adding a bit of cheese and/or sour cream) will make them better.
As I was unloading, a guy about my age or a few years younger wheeled up on a bike and asked me if I wanted to hire him to mow the lawn. This causes a cascade of responses in me:
1. "Stranger danger" - I don't like being approached by people I don't know. Even though this is a small town and 95% of people are pretty safe, still, that 5%.....and I got panhandled too many times when I lived in a city to be happy having a random stranger come up to me when my purse is in obvious view (and so, harder for me to say "No, I don't have any money")
2. I would NEVER hire someone off the street without references. How do I know how trustworthy he is, how do I know he won't say he will come and do the work but never show up?
3. Wow, times must be really tough if a guy my age has to go out on a bike and hustle for manual labor.
4. Yipes, does my lawn look THAT bad? And immediately I felt guilty about the state of my lawn and that I kind of failed as an adult for not getting it mowed before now.
Which led me to hauling out my mower after I got home this afternoon and doing the front yard (after picking up all the sticks). Did the back yard, too, except for where the old leaf pile is, because there are still enough lurking sticks (under the bedstraw, which will die off in a few weeks anyway) to be dangerous. I was hoping to put it off a few more weeks but one of my immediate neighbors mowed theirs over the weekend, and the people kitty-corner from me, well, apparently mowing the lawn is the guy's hobby because he does it about three times a week. (He has a riding mower). So anyway, now the random mower guys looking to drum up business can go to one of the other neighbors (there are a couple who haven't mowed yet; one has large mounds of clover in the yard)
I don't LOVE mowing the lawn and I will confess back in the fall I was playing with the idea of hiring someone for this year, but then the budget cuts hit, and I decided I could afford to have my lawn mowed or cable, but not both. And since I've always done my lawn up to now, and I really would rather have cable than someone mowing my lawn (because otherwise I get zero channels other than what streams on Amazon Prime). (And the lawn and the cable would cost about the same per month; lawn mowing here is not cheap, at least not as cheap as what I got paid when I did my parents' lawn as a kid)
But it was good to get out in the sun and the fresh air and get a bit of different exercise. And I saw a rough earth snake - a good sized one; it got scared out of some leaf litter at the edge of the sidewalk. I stopped and gently guided it back to an area where there was some soft earth it could burrow into; rough earth snakes are NICE snakes and I like keeping them around and don't want them to get hurt. Some people will reflexively kill any snake they see but I admit the non-venomous ones (the only ones I have ever seen around my house) are ones I'd like to encourage because they tend to eat "problem" animals. (If only I could encourage a few black rat snakes to take up residence....)
I will say the fairly-new (I think I bought it last year?) Earthwise reel-type lawnmower is the best reel-type lawnmower I've had. (It's the third. Sadly, the Husqvarna I bought before it did NOT last well, it broke after just a couple years. Wondering if some other company leased the Husqvarna name....)
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