Ready to Run

The dealer delivered my John Deere tractor on Friday but forgot to bring the wagon with it. I ran into town yesterday morning to pick it up. (I love that all the farm-related stores open at 7 or 8 in the morning, so I can do my shopping before the crowds come out.) The husband assembled the wagon when he got home from doing a concrete job—yes, he works on Saturdays—although the wagon isn’t hooked up to the mower yet. He wants to fabricate an extended tongue for it. I have a bagging attachment on my mower and we’d rather not have to take it off every time we want to hook up the wagon. The bagging attachment is quite the thing (picture from the John Deere website):

I look at this and think that my father would be very impressed by this bit of engineering. In the 1970s, he built a bagging attachment for our riding mower from a set of Popular Mechanics plans. It consisted of a wagon with a framed and screened box over it hooked up to a flexible hose attached to the mower deck with a hose clamp. He loved to ride around in the fall and suck up all the leaves in the yard.

Bring on the grass. The husband says that the little boys and I can start our own lawn maintenance business.

Garden cleanup is done. We’re ready for planting. I pruned the grapevines—pretty heavily, now that I have a better sense of what I am doing and can “see” what needs to be removed. Every time I prune them, they produce like crazy, so I anticipate another good crop this fall. I just need to figure out how to keep the turkeys from eating the grapes. I planted peas and visited with our neighbor, Mike, who was out working in his garden. We looked at the seedlings in the greenhouse and I admired the planters he put on his porch. We had a couple of large pots in the greenhouse that weren’t being used, so I suggested he take them and fill them with some flowers. They look nice.

I’ve seen a few trilliums scattered around the property:

The robins have forsaken the porch rafters as nesting sites in favor of the rafters at the new shop. I assume they know what they are doing, although those rafters are higher up off the ground. The babies will be safer from Lila, however.

We finished off our day with an excellent dinner at a local restaurant. The husband had an appetizer of three beef sliders—fancy little hamburgers—a salad, another hamburger, and a slice of cheesecake with whipped cream for dessert. He also finished off part of my meal. I think the waitress was a bit stunned to see someone eat that much food.

I’ve put together a total of three Providence quilt blocks and am trying to decide how far I want to go with this one as it’s not a simple block. There are 12 half-square triangle units and four quarter-square triangle units in a 25-unit block (5 x 5 grid). This is not the fiddliest block I’ve ever made, but neither is it quick and easy. Would anyone (me, especially) have the patience to make an entire quilt? I’ve already pulled the fabric for it, but I’m having second thoughts. Stay tuned.