String Trimmers, Global Warming and Cow Pies


Right after dad passed away I posted this to a forum on CountryPlans.Com  http://www.countryplans.com/ If you go there there, on the banner there is forum.  We are a loose knit family from all over.  We share our dreams.  There are a few very knowledgeable people there in the build trades.  There are some who never really will drive a nail yet we all dream.....


I hope you enjoy......
String Trimmers, Global Warming and Cow Pies

Because of certain events in the last week or two like a death in the family, then before that there was rain, rain then hot temps and high winds.  More trips up to the ranch than I think I really did.  So in other words we were far behind.

I woke up to the fact that the weeds were about to take over in couple places we cannot spray or do not spray.  No!  Strike that thought!  No, not about spraying, but the weeds.  They had taken over.  So after we finally got our garden in.  We plant mainly anymore  just a salsa garden.  With lots and lots of tomatoes and peppers then some the summer squash and cucumbers.  I decided it was time to attack the weeds.

I first had to run to the gas station and with a 2.5 gallon gas can for two gallons of gas to mix with two cycle oil.  Not really a can, I do remember those however.  Just old verbiage and nouns are hard to.......  Anyway this one is plastic and it does have the old spout.  Once again thank you Mr. Government for making life safer and simpler.  Have you actually tried to fill a chainsaw from one of those new gas cans?  It is sort of like needing someone to help you tinkle when you have both arms broke at the same time.  These new spouts and cans are a far worse danger than the old ones were ever made out to be.  They are going to spill more fuel and cause more fires than any of the old ones.

Two gallons of gas and two cycle oil worked out to about $10.00.  Remember when you could..........?  Actually two gallons of two cycle gas for most people is like a whole summer and fall with a normal sized city lot and dispose of some when snow flies in the winter.  Rick and Ellen go through that fairly quickly with two acres here and the ranch up there.  We heat mostly with wood.  Last year was 100% with wood.  So I very seldom let the fuel get old and stale. 

So it was time to unbury the string trimmer from the corner in the tool shed.  The head was full of line and there was even a fresh spool hang on the wall.  I think Ellen was outfitting me for action.  Can you remember when you got string trimmer line next to something and it would snap off.  Then you had to pull the head all apart and find the end of the string and rethread it and on and on!  Well that was aggravating.  However it at least gave you a break.  One to stop, rest your back and re-thread.  Not so with the new lines today.  You run them wide open and for a whole tank of fuel and the head just happily spins and dispenses line whistling and humming and thumping and a line never breaks.

I filled it with fresh fuel and gave the rope a pull.  Half hoping that the starter rope would not pull.  But the big old Husky-var-na trimmer roared to life.  And I commenced the spring ritual of mass string trimming.  Plus this gives me an opportunity to make my carbon footprint larger.  That seems important to me right now as I struggle with who am I?  This after the loss of my father.  Strange at 60 years old I now seem to be wondering just who the heck I am.  He was always there, even though the last couple years his short term memory was gone most the time.  He was still dad and my mentor and the family leader.   Now it is just me, well there is Ellen, but she is a girl.
 
I started in the Idaho Power easement, a wasteland of cheatgrass and foxtail this time of year.  It is most likely 25 foot wide and 120 foot long of which we really can not do anything with.  I own it, I pay taxes on it.  However I really cannot put a shed on it, I really can not landscape it.  It is just a dry part of my lot.  Idaho Power has to be able to get in there in the event of line or transformer repair.  It does serve as a good no mans land between me and my neighbor to the west.  Strange as I think of it. I have my yard fence there.  (Chain link, tall and stout.)  Then there is the easement, twenty five feet of no man's land.  Then there is the fence on the property line.  Then when the neighbor built his house he also installed a chain link corral for his five or six kids and growing family.  Plus this time of the year with all the foliage there is in my yard.  Landscaping which would make a landscape architect pass out, hardly with envy.  That, as well as the neighbors landscaping which looks a little more professionally done.  So if you are in my yard do not try to escape to the west.  I spent a day there string trimming the easement  Well it seemed like a day but closer to an hour.  Well long enough to run out of both fuel and string.  I stopped for a cool glass of water and to check my e-mail before I went out to conquer a few thistles and wild ash trees with the sprayer and the Agent Orange.  When I had finished defoliating my little portion of the world, and before protestors arrived on the scene, next on the agenda was string trimming a cattle corral.

The cattle corral where also there was an an over abundance of cheatgrass and foxtail grass and hidden down in them were these carefully disguised cow pies.  The weather being warm and if you have ever or never been around cow pies or the leavings after a cow does it’s thing.  I might need to explain cow feces is thin not watery thin but a little thicker than.....well if you are a concrete guy lets say about a eight or ten inch slump.  If you are a cook it it is sort of like a thick cake batter or pie filling.  The hot sun and weather sort of crusts it over.  It looks hard yet the inside remains remarkably fresh.

If you were in a pasture environment when you were a kid.  (There were more of us then, than now by a long shot.)  Spring arrived and off came the shoes.  As a kid the first thing you figured out do not step on the honey bees with bare feet!   They will sting you and somehow get their stinger into the most calloused feet.  The next thing is just because cow pie looks hard does not mean it is.  Just because the top may be brown and hard looking, it is a trick do not go there.  That is insulating that soft gooey center.  I am sure that universities have studied the time it takes to set up firm.  Those findings would be set into a step chart table with humidity and ambient temperatures.

I do not think anything pulls your mind back into reality of the moment, as when you sort of have your mind in coast.  You do not have the Agricultural University’s chart in hand.  No, you are just doing a mundane thing of weed whacking or string trimming.  You think you are in full control, the motor is running at a full open.  Fittingly making the largest carbon footprint it and you can possibly produce.  The trimmer's head is happily spinning and dispensing line, whistling and humming and thumping.  Suddenly your safety glasses are green and you can not see.  Your hands and face are moist and green, you and your clothes now smell like cow pooo-pooo.  You cannot believe it, and true to human nature you have to look and then take a second look. Like what caused that?  Did I hit a cow pie?  No silly, remember if cows could fly.  It was just a good thing you were not looking up.  Or your mouth was not open!

Then another thought came to my mind.  What if dad in his passing and he and his old cowboy and mischief friend.  My great uncle Bob Simmons just dropped in for the moment.  Not that I think stuff like that occurs.  However I could not help from thinking of Dad and Uncle Bob standing in the yard watching and laughing and Uncle Bob saying,  “By golly Dord he did it.”