Rabbit Hutches Day 2 The Regrets.

Today. Oh today. Today beat me up and wore me out and pushed me onto the floor. Or possibly down some steps. Metaphorical steps.

The day started, as all my days start by rolling out of bed and feeding all of the ungrateful hungry mouths. After staggering back into the house I found I had a few moments of free time before we were to began working owing to the fact I woke up early this morning.

Feeling at peace with the world, I noticed my dog laying on floor telling me what a good girl she had been with her eyes. I knelt down to pet her and she smiled, rolling over on her back so that I could scratch her tummy.

That's when I found the flea.

Oh boy.

However, I couldn't launch into my usual vacuum-spray-poison-shampoo tornado of hyper death, because it was time to go work on the rabbit hutches.

Oh joy of joys.

So I drug myself and the itchy ass dog down to the site where I could work out my frustration at life by moving gravel around in a wheelbarrow. We laid down a think layer of gravel, followed by a light layer of sand. At this point it was decided that we should probably take a break and go to town during the heat of the day cause we were kinda out of food and junk.

Town was towny, and I got the rare joy of learning that the reason I couldn't log into my bank account online was that I am an idiot because I never set up a user name. Awesome. We also bought flea shampoo and flea floor spray which I realized upon getting it home that I can't use because I am fairly sure that it will kill Miss Peeperington.

When we got back we decided to work on the framing, since we were going to embed the posts in the concrete.

This.

Except nothing wanted to work. Even with two of us, the structure was shimmying around, making it almost impossible to keep level. Also at one point I was responsible for keeping three posts upright simultaneously because there was only two of us.

It took a while to finally get the lower sections of boards on. First off the vibration of screwing the boards on would knock any tool off of the frame you had on there, so the first hour was spent dodging screw guns and levels and screws because it's human fucking nature to set things onto a surface at waist level no matter how stupid that might be in retrospect.

At this point, with most of the lower level intact and the structure being able to stand on it's own, I became convinced that it had been possessed by some sort of wandering malevolent entity* Nothing was coming up level. And when we did get something level the whole thing would lean and shift and put us right back into fuckallsville in a hurry. There was cursing and accusations and anger and yelling and thoughts of murder. We fought those posts and no matter how hard we worked nothing NOTHING was staying level. You could do one side and then walk back over to the other and it would be as crooked as a uh, motherfucking crooked thing.

The final straw seemed to be, after moving a board yet again, the level dived off the top of the board and landed with a loud smack right into the sand. For a moment Scott didn't move. I figured this was the moment that he would snap and declare that we were making a Salvidor Dali bunny hutch and that they were just going to have to live with it.

Slowly, like a man in a dream he reached down and picked up the level.

“The level.” he said.

Yup this would be that breakdown I thought was coming.

“The level,” he repeated, “it's not level.”

The level was broken. It had been dropped, and the plasitc level bit with the bubble had been knocked, ever so slightly out of whack. Together we stared at our levely Judas. Then we threw it into the dirt pile and found another fucking level.

It only took us half on hour to fix it after that.

Which was about the time the guy from Miss Utility (the call before you dig so you don't dig through a fucking gas line people) showed up. I think he was there for all of ten minutes. He walked over, we showed him where we were going to be digging, he examined the power pole told us we were good and zoomed off in his truck. Also, he was wearing bright orange sneakers that looked like had been spray painted that color cause that's how he rolls apparently.

So that was good.

But of course the day wasn't over. We still had to set up for the pour tomorrow which I will be getting up at 6:30am to fucking do because you can never have to early of a start when you will be mixing and pouring cement. And then of course I had to launch into murder the fleas mode where I vacuumed and bathed the dog in flea shampoo that you had to leave on for a WHOLE FIVE FUCKING MINUTES while the dog kept shaking and got shampoo all over me but at least I will now be flea free. And of course I had to write this entry which you all won't read till morning cause I am not posting shit tonight.

This was one of those days that was more like several days all crammed into one day. I think I would like to go back to having just one day in my day, thank you very much.

Now I am going to eat ice cream until I feel better about life.

Fix my pain, ice cream.

Fix my pain.

*It's probably that ghost chicken.

 Want more Rabbit Hutch Adventures? Or course you do Here's Part Three. 

  Confused? Here's Part 1.

Building Rabbit Hutches.

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So today we started construction on four rabbit hutches that we kinda need to make because the buns are currently living in a falling down shed that is slowly dying around them. Also the shed is the middle of the field, a hot sunny weedy ass field.

So we are moving them under the trees by the chicken coup where they will not get slow roasted during the summer so maybe I won't have to keep bringing them frozen bottles of water to keep them cool. Not that it worked anyway because they seem to think that the bottles are the devil sent from hell to destroy them and wont sit anywhere near the damn things.

Ingrates.

Anyway, our plan was to build one long hutch that would be divided into four sections. Even though I only have three rabbits because you never know when you could need another cage for something in a hurry because life is unpredictable like that.

So today was spent preparing to pour a cement slab to put it on. Why are we pouring a slab you ask? Because I live on top of a fucking mountain and we routinely get 60-80 mile on hour winds in the winter and I don't want my rabbit homes to do a face plant into a foot of snow.

That might put them off there feed a bit.

So we are embedding the posts into the concrete and praying that nature doesn't see that as a challenge.

So today we used my personal hero, King the backhoe, to dig out the area where the slab will go. Which was awesome because backhoes are fucking sweet and don't let anyone tell you different. And digging by hand sucks big time.

What were we talking about?

Oh yeah. Well we did have to dig by hand a little to level it out, but mostly it was good. Then we did a bunch of boring shit like making the frame for the concrete pour and leveling it, and also adding rocks to the hole slip form style* to make it appear like we had actually out in a stone foundation for this thing even though we haven't because we are fucking crazy. And willing include stonework into every project we do even though it might not be necessary.

Right.

Then we had to put in gravel which is nowhere near the build site because that would make sense. So we loaded up King and then it kinda occurred to us that it was like six and we we both starving so we kinda gave up on working for the day and went and ate dinner.

And by 'give up on working for the day' I mean that we ate dinner and then cleaned the site and prepared a path to get the wheelbarrow in and then Scott made a batch of beer and I vacuumed the floors and wrote this entry and cleaned out Miss Peeperington's cage. And took a shower.

You know what? I think I'm just going to go to sleep.

Probably in this chair.

* Slip form stone work is stone veneer done by smashing rocks up against the inside of a set of forms and then backfilling the forms with cement. Therefore the mason works blind, and cannot see the final face until he or she is done. Also, with this system, rocks can and will pop off the face and need to be shoved back in, as well as chipping off the excess cement that has oozed out between the rocks. It's really not a very good method at all, but if you want to learn more you will just have to Google it cause I am actually writing this a 10 at night and feel like I have been run over by a freight train. 

Want more Rabbit Hutch Adventures? Or course you do Here's Part 2.

 

We are going to build a house. Right now.

So we decided to start building a house this year. And by start building, I mean install a septic system because West Virgina doesn't want people just pooping in the creek.

It all came about because the Internet died. Remember that 500ft of Cat 5 we ran from one mobile home to the other? And remember how that sort of worked but then didn't? Yeah. So we came to the conclusion that we have to build the house. Closer to the internet.

It is the only way.

So we went to town and talked to the department of health, and they gave us a booklet and told us that we had to have a test done so they can make sure we have enough drainage. Or maybe we need too much drainage and okay maybe I didn't read the damn book.

Whatever.

Or course we are still a long way away from actually, you know building the thing.

You know, when you plan your dream house you have things that you want. Beautiful unique awesome things that you dream about having and plan on having and day dream about when you should be thinking about other things.

Now, to prepare yourself for the real experience, take about half of those things that you wanted, and maybe more if you are really poor, and just wipe them off the map.

Then your ready to build!

Ha ha ha! Isn't this exciting!

Oh god.

I have been torn between Oh god we are finally going to build a house I have been waiting years and years for this moment when we would finally start and it's going to be the best house ever in the whole world and Oh god we are going to have to actually build a house and what If we screw it up and county won't let us live there and everyone laughs at us and then I die alone in gutter because I am a failure at life and everything?

So I've pretty much been bouncing back and forth between giddy excitement and terror.

Whee!

Yeah. So we are still busy trying to do all of those things that we need to prior to this house idea. Like fix the driveway and move the bunnies because there shed is smack in the way and pulling fence posts out of the house site and finding places to rent an auger because the septic test involves way too many holes to dig by hand.

And SWEET BANANA MONKEYS I AM GOING TO BUILD A MOTHER FUCKING HOUSE AND NO I WILL NOT STOP SHOUTING BECAUSE HOUSE, HOUSE, HOUSE, HOUSE, HOUSE!

With rooms and a staircase and plumbing and electricity and walls that don't give slightly when you press on them and more then two outlets in the kitchen and, and everything.

Squee!

Unexpected (and Terrible) Chicken Excitement.

Okay. So we lost* a chicken. In what I would like to think is the most traumatic way possible outside of her dying in my arms after being riddled with gunshot wounds while begging me to tell her loved ones she will miss them.

Normally when a chicken meets it's untimely end we come up short on the head count and the next day we find either nothing at all whatsoever anywhere, or a big pile of feathers.

This time was radically different.

Notably, I was asleep.

Now, Miss Chicken had failed to show up for head count, so I kinda assumed those asshole hawks had been at it again, briefly morned the loss, and then went back inside. I also had to get up at 3am because I had to be at work at stupid early the next morning. So I pretty much shut up the chickens, came inside and went to the sweet soft land that was bed.

Except I couldn't sleep because it was shitballs hot outside so I ended up roaming around looking for the fan I always put in the window. And something to put the fan on. And somewhere to plug the fan in. Look I am poor at getting to fucking sleep in the summer time alright?

So needless to say I was awake for a tad longer then I should have been if we all believe that eight hour sleep rule thing. But in the end there was something so wonderful about the drone of the fan, the cooling mountain air that is clean and clear and fresh blowing over me, and the heavy feel of Scott's arm around me, that I at last fell into a deep and restful sleep.

That was promptly shattered at about 12:35am by the frantic sounds of a chicken screaming.

Oh shit.

My first instinct was to jump up and flip off the fan. Which of course made the screaming Hi Def. I don't speak chicken very well, if at all, but I think she was saying:

OH GOD OH GOD OH NO OH NOOOOOO AUUUGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!

The screaming reached a fevered pitch that had me on feet and groping around for my pants** before being cut off abruptly.

And that was followed by dead silence.

From the sound of it, she must have been almost under the goddamned bedroom window. Which is a lot closer then I feel comfortable having screaming.

I looked at the clock. I had two hours with which to get some sleep.

I looked back outside, into the deep dark Appalachian night. And I said, “Fuck it, I can buy another chicken. ” And then I went back to sleep.

Which would have been a great plan if it wasn't for the fact that I had a horrible fucking nightmare in which I was staggering through the woods and the waist high meadows armed only with only a flashlight while finding every dead pet I had ever owned was there. Alive. Watching me. But none of them would come up to me and I could never to get all the way to them and OH GOD I AM SORRY ALREADY.

Ahem.

Is it possible to be haunted by a chicken?

Like a chicken resentful that it was screaming out for your help and you couldn't even be bothered to avenge it's death because you wanted to go back to bed even though you don't blame the raccoon that did it because it was only doing what comes natural and you would have totally eaten that dumbass stray chicken too?

You know?

Like that can't happen, right?

Right?

RIGHT!?

Oh god.

* Lost being a euphemism for she is really, really dead.

** Holly's rule of any disaster scenario: Whatever it is, you will be better off fighting it wearing pants. Not pajama pants, not shorts, not boxers. Pants.

Harvesting Hay -now with Poor Planning!

Have you ever had one of those times when you can see a problem looming on the horizon, brewing up like a dark and unpleasant thunderstorm? And you just completely ignore it because you wore yourself out and then spent an entire day drinking because the pain in your arms was so bad you felt like the time you broke your finger was a fucking joy ride?

No?

Just me?

So yesterday we harvested the hay. At about 4 pm. Why so late you ask? Because I wanted to give the hay the maximum time to dry out before putting it somewhere. Also, it was super angry hot outside. Of course this meant that we were now in a race against the dew. And of course it was supposed to rain shit barrels the next day because none of my projects would be complete without some sort of weather imposed deadline.

The problem? The bunny barn, also known as the only place to store hay on this entire fucking farm, is not a barn, it's a shed. An ancient narrow shed. With a slim, tiny place to store hay. That I was now trying to cram full of hay from a meadow that was almost over my head when I harvested it.

Needless to say it didn't work.

Also, we had two more meadows to go. I looked at Scott, and he looked at me. “Where the hell are we going to put all this?” I asked. The thought of leaving it in the meadows to rot was unthinkable. Not after what I had gone through to get it. We tried several other ideas, such as putting it on the ground and tarping it, shoving it into the other mobile home, or maybe running it through the chipper shredder.

Then Scott said “I know, how about the roof?”

The roof. The upside down laying in the field roof to the old barn that neither one of us could move or indeed get apart because those people had built this motherfucker out of oak and by god this roof was going to stay together. The wonderful metal roof that was the perfect distance and location from both the bunny barn and the chicken coup.

So that is what we did. We piled hay on it. Except that, even with the roof, we vastly, VASTLY underestimated the mountain of hay that we had. We continued to collect the lower meadow hay, and pile it onto our new hay storage area. Except that we had almost filled up the foot print of the roof, which wasn't really that big to began with (it was a small, small barn.)

So we did what we always do in these situations, ignored the problem and kept on getting hay. We took the truck to the upper meadow and started to fill it. At one point I was standing in the truck bed stomping up and down on the hay trying to smash it down so we could cram some more on, and I realized that we were going to bury that roof under an avalanche of hay.

Which is exactly what ended up happening.

It was late in the evening, when the last rays of the sun were gone, and it could just be seen hovering over the end of the valley while the sky turned into those watercolor shades of pink and blue. I shoved the last pitchfork full on hay onto the stack and stopped to admire our handy work. Then I turned to Scott and said those fateful words. “Wait, do we even have a tarp?”

Motherfucker.

We looked everywhere. We had two choices, we could forgo dinner since it was about nine at night and drive to Walmart, or we could do it in the morning. We chose morning, although it didn't fucking help that I hadn't eating anything since about two in the after noon and the neighbors were grilling steak out and I could fucking smell that shit.

Assholes.

So this morning we got up and checked the weather. We had a two hour window. So Scott threw breakfast in his face and jumped in the car and drove to town to buy a humongous tarp. But of course this is the country and you can't go to town just for a tarp because we also needed things like chicken feed and bread and shit.

So I was just milling around the house mobile home waiting for him to return. It was getting late. I sat down to write this entry and looked up. It was starting to rain. That light almost not raining but it is kinda mist raining. It was too late. The tarp had not arrived in time.

It was then I heard the crunch of gravel. He was back! With a tarp! I shoved my feet into my shoes and ran outside, where I promptly learned that trying to open a tarp while running with it means you will drop the tarp.

So we unfolded that bitch and shoved it onto the pile and weighted it down with whatever the hell we could fucking find at the time and then retreated back into the house knowing our hay was safe from the weather that keeps trying to fuck up our plans. Bitch ass weather.

We won this round sky.

We won this round like champions.

Cutting Hay the Really Hard Way.

So yesterday besides the excitement of rescuing a baby deer fawn, we made hay. Lot's and lot's of hay.

Probably too much hay. Because the weather had been uncooperative, I basically had one day in which to make all my hay so that it would be good and dry before I stored it because wet hay can catch on fire and burn your shit to the ground. No pressure or anything though.

Now being me, I make my hay by hand, with a scythe. Which is fun, but also requires a lot of upper body strength.

So I did what any red blooded American does when they are faced with a enormous, labor intensive task of herculean proportions, I drank a bitchshitton of caffeine. Which worked like a charm really. I was the first one out to scythe since Scott was cleaning his office that morning. It was a beautiful day. The temperature was perfect, with a deep blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds and a swift clear breeze. And about eighty bazillion flies. And we were out of bug spray.

After searching both mobile homes, I managed to find a tube of suntan lotion that also contained bug spray and smeared it all over me. Which did work, for about half an hour. Luckily, Scott dug through our travel bags and located some before the insects were able to lift me off and carry me to their terrible kingdom of itchiness.*

I was really enjoying myself. I could watch the birds in the sky, and see the shadows of the clouds slide along our ridge. The caffeine masked any tiredness and aching and I was left to enjoy the labor and the day.

That is until we finished with the upper meadows.

The upper meadows are more sparse, as they used to be grazing for horses and still shows the signs of overgrazing even all these years later. So cutting the hay out of them is relatively easy. But the lower meadows, oh god they are as dense as motherfucking antimatter.

Now the upper meadows we sort of seeded lazily if at all, same with weed removal.

But the lower meadow, I had a goal. I was going to make a hay field. Not just any hay field, the best goddamned hay field the world had ever seen. So I spent two years cutting the weeds back. And then we seeded it with grass seed and then when the grass came up I hand harvested it for fresh treats and bedding for my bunnies. Always being careful to never take to much from one area and to watch the ratio of plants to judge the health of the soil.

And this year the grass was as tall as me.

Which was both awesome and terrible. Awesome because that is some good ass hay right there, and terrible because cutting it by hand was pretty fucking awful.

I couldn't do a full swing, so moving forward one step involved several passes. Also, there was no way to see the ground beneath my feet, so I kept hitting my scythe on rocks and stumps and shit.

Fun.

But we goddamed did it. Even with an angry mama deer breathing down our necks and watching us from the safety of the forest thinking dark malevolent thoughts.

Except that by the end of day my arms were shot. I have to explain that my right arm takes almost the full wight of the scythe, and it hurt like a bitch. It hurt almost as bad as when I had broken my finger. Once the caffeine wore off I sent Scott to the store for beer. Except I had forgotten that my painkillers were in the car that he had left in to obtain said beer.

Fuck.

Even taking a shower didn't help. It was like a achy dull pain that would intermittently form a sharp stabbing pain whenever the fuck it felt like it. So that evening was spent crawling around trying to find a position where my arm wouldn't hurt like hell (there wasn't one.)

It was one of those nights were you count down the minutes until you can reasonably go to bed because your body is shot and you are covered in bug bites. And sunburn.

Yeah.

Nothing quite like this glamorous farm life.

Kill me.

*It 'tis a terrible place.

I Just Saved a Baby Deer You Guys!

I just saved a baby deer. You know a cute adorable baby deer fawn.

Okay, so I was making hay, and I had decided to start with my prize hay meadow. The grasses were as tall as I was, thick and perfect. And of course I was using my trusty Scythe. Which for those of you that don't know, allows me to make hay by hand.

There is a wonderful rhythm that you fall into when you scythe. You cut, step pause, cut step pause. It's not noisy or messy. The hay falls into neat rows along your path. You can hear the wind in the trees and feel the grasses swaying around you. It is zen.

Until of course you are startled half out of your mind by a deer fawn leaping out of your path and running away into another part of the meadow.

Well then.

So being me, I immediately went to the upper fields to scythe so that mom would have time to move junior. Which it turns out was a bad idea because, halfway through the second field I surprised another fawn. At which point we decided it was time for lunch.

Mmm lunch.

So we get back and discover Mama is there. She has found her fawn, who is running around the cut meadow and playing. After a few minutes of eyeballing us warily mom and baby made off into the woods while looking goddamned majestic.

So we finish the upper meadow and return to my beautiful prize hay meadow of awesome.

Only to discover something horrible had happened.

It turns out the the first fawn I had seen that day had not ran off. Instead he had been trying to run off, and had gotten tangled in a section of fencing we had not yet removed.

Scott spotted him first. He called me over and pointed it out. I felt horrified. Not only had I scared the shit out of this little guy, I also owned the fencing that was now a live trap. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

There was only one thing to do. Get him out of there.

So I waded through the chest and waist high meadow to the line of fence. It was half laying down, so I had to be very careful not to step on the fence itself or it would bend down alarmingly. Halfway there my stomach did one of those flips that makes your skin crawl. He was caught in the big square fencing, so that his stomach was hooked over the wire with his legs through on either side. This wasn't going to be easy. I would have to pull each leg out separately, while he would be trying to kick me into a mushy pile of predator.

Gingerly, fearing the worst, I slowly slid up beside him. I was afraid to touch him. He couldn't kick me yet, but I was afraid that the moment I touched him he would start flailing and hurt himself further. The seconds dragged on while I stood there staring at this poor trapped wild thing while Scott said encouraging things like “When you touch him, he's gonna explode” and “watch out cause he's gonna kick the shit out of you.”

Deciding I just wouldn't think about it anymore I reached down and touched his rump. Nothing happened. He didn't move an inch. He was too exhausted. Carefully I reached down and gently but firmly grabbed his right leg. I had to be careful, because he had a nasty scrap on that leg, but it did not appear to be bleeding. Carefully I pulled the leg up and fed it down through the same hole his belly was in.

And that's when all hell broke loose.

Feeling his leg come free he began to thrash wildly, forgetting his left leg was still stuck, which made him panic even more. My first thought was 'oh god he is going to break his leg.' Also he began screaming at the top of his little deer lungs. Without stopping to think about the fact that he was not hanging as limp as a doll anymore I grabbed his left leg, and with a surprising deftnesses fed it back through the hole in the wire.

It was like movie scene. The fawn fell forward, scrambling to get his feet under him and pushing himself into the grasses. Time seemed to stop and slow down. Scott said something, but I didn't listen, I couldn't listen. I was watching my fawn. His spots stood out white as snow on his brown rump as the sun streamed down into the meadow, the edges of the scene softened by my intensity of that moment. He was moving both back legs. He was going to be okay.

At that point my brain caught up to the rest of what was going on and I realized that what Scott said was “here comes mom.”

And she was PISSED.

I have never heard deer make the sounds she was making. Remember that the grass is almost over my head. I could barely see her, but my god I could hear her. She was snorting and stamping and crashing through the brush like a motherfucking bear. At this point I realized that I was standing right by her fawn, who a few seconds ago was screaming bloody murder. Oh shit.

I ran like a little girl.

My brain, who never feels the need to clue me in on these moments, probably because I would fuck fleeing up somehow if it did, didn't come back to me until I was standing by the bunny shed. I called to Scott and together we made our way out of field.

We gave mom a good half hour to calm down before finishing off the meadow. We left the fawns section intact, and this morning he was gone. Which means that mom came back and moved him and that his legs were fine and holy crap I just saved a baby deer.

Holy crap.

HOLY CRAP MONKEYS!

I'm... I'm awesome.

My Fridge is Possessed by an Ice Demon.

For whatever reason, my fridge keeps making ice. Lots and lots of ice. And I have no idea why. I am fairly sure that the ice dispenser itself is broken. Does that stop the fridge? Oh no. The other problem is that there is no ice containment area either, apparently. So the tippy top portion of the freezer is always coated in a bunch of ice cubes. If we ever loose power for more then 48 hours the kitchen will be a swimming pool. An icy, icy swimming pool.

Every once in a while Scott will open the door and shovel ice out. If it's hot out he may use it himself, or put it in the pets water bowls as a treat, but mostly he just shovels it into a bucket and dumps it on the lawn, much to the amusement of the chickens. Which, you know, seems kinda wasteful.

I personally would like to stop the fridge from doing this, only I have no idea how. My parents had never been rich enough to afford a fridge with an ice machine so I always though you had to dump water into them somehow to get ice. Like you know, with a bucket or something? Right? Is that how this works?

And we haven't been adding any water, sooo?

There is only one explanation.

The fridge is possessed by an ice demon.

A motherfucking ice demon. And it's in my fridge right now. Should I call an exorcist? Should I try to pour holy water in it, provided I can find the part that may or may not exist where you can put water in? Should I just set the fridge on fire? Will it burn?

This is the kind of shit they should cover in the bible people.

It's clear there is only one way to stop it, burn the house to the ground pull it out and have a look at what's run to the back of it, if possible also armed with crucifixes.

Or ignore the problem until hopefully the whole ice making system burns out.

Problem solved!

Motherfucker.

A Chipper Shredingly Good Time.

Do you remember my battle with the terrible invasive species? And how I piled up their desecrated limbs to be chipper shredded at some point in the future?

That day had finally come. From this experience I have learned several things. One, the chipper shredder will not work on a non level surface. How much of this place is not level you ask? All of it. Number two, multiflora rose, even dead, still wants to cut a bitch, hardcore. And three, bush honeysuckle and multiflora rose make mulch that smells like the perfume of angels.

Which I got to enjoy for approximately one minute before my sinuses were made aware of the situation.

The rest of the day was spent sneezing and coughing and snerking.

Also, have you ever sneezed with hearing protection in? Like the kind that come on the little strings that you you shove painfully into each ear that make you really, really hyper aware of every time you smile? Yeah, well I wouldn't recommend it.

We had a plan. We were ready. And life just showed up and smacked us around for a bit. First off, it became apparent that my dad had never changed the oil in this damn thing. What was left in it was the consistency of black tar. So we drained it and added fresh, along with refilling the gas tank and giving it a general tune up. Test started it, and it ran like a dream.

So we picked up the end and pulled it across the front lawn to the first pile of dead branches. It was at this point we realized, all over again, how much multiflora rose hates us.* We also discovered that the collection bag did not like staying on, and how no matter how tight we made it, it would still gape open at the top and spew mulch out like a bulimic herbivore going through a bad break up.

But beyond that, things actually went kinda well.

Except for the fact that we couldn't find another level spot in the entire top third of our property except in the garden.** Which meant that I had to haul all the dead, and most often spiky branches from all over the meadows. And we also discovered that three huge piles of branches make three tiny piles of mulch.

Like seriously WTF? Is there some sort of worm hole in that thing?

Two branches enter one branch leaves***.

Anywho, at least I got even with that evil demon bitch multiflora rose.

Sonofabitchass plant.

*I cannot possible stress this enough. If anyone you know is planting this shit, please for the love of all that is good and holy talk them out of it. Or kill them. Either one.

**No wood mulch is not good for gardens necessarily, but we wanted something to edge it with to keep the weeds down.

*** If you get this joke I will high five you over the internet. Also, leaf pun FTW!