My Mother’s Day involved outside work. As usual.  Ron started this tradition  years ago when we first bought our house. The birch tree in our front yard had taken a hit during what is remembered as the Labor Day storm. This before we moved in. Very sad it looked too, poor dead tree. Ron decided it needed to be replaced over Mother’s Day weekend in 2000 so we dug it up and then as we were left with a large hole, headed off the a local nursery.

We bought a pretty tree, had it loaded into our pickup and headed home. Only to discover the two of us were  not strong enough to get the tree down into the hole.  Thank God our neighbor spotted us struggling and came to help.

This Mother’s Day was much easier on me.  And of course involved THF.   All I had to do was help Ron roll out and cut eight 60 foot lengths from his 250 foot rolls of landscape cloth.  We loaded up the trailer with the two rolls, measuring tape, chalk, scissors, knee pads, chalk snap line and headed to an open parking lot.  We chose a good one.  The parking spots were nicely marked and we were able to use those lines to keep a straight edge and our cutting point of 60 feet.  Got an early start as we were not sure how long it would take us and weren’t sure what  the neighbors would think.

The hardest part was actually lifting the rolls off the trailer.  They has some serious weight.  Then we lined the edges up and rolled it out.    Then we got out the chalk line and snapped away.

Ron, of course got the one with red chalk that ended up all over my fingers and pants. I was in charge of the actually cutting.

We cut and folded and rolled and marked again and again.  Not sure what the people walking by thought but they all waved and said good morning.    Sooner than we expected, we had a pile of eight sections ready to go.  We unroll the last bite from each roll and folded them up.  Ron will find a use for them somewhere.

Loaded everything into the trailer, making sure we left nothing behind.  We are seriously into not littering.   I thought my day was over.  And it being Mother’s Day that I would now  have some me time.

Ron had himself a better idea.  Our second hand lawn mower had seen better days.  Now the self propelled drive had died.  Made it much harder to doing the mowing so it really did need to be replaced.  He had already talked  himself out of getting us an electric model.  He was worried about getting it repaired.   So off we went to Lowe’s in Oneida.  Unfortunately they did not have the model he wanted.  We headed back to the Transit and made the drive to Rome.  They had a better selection and we found one with all wheel drive and made in America.  To top it off, I had a $250 Lowe’s gift card.

We got back home and grabbed a quick lunch.  Then headed out to get our new lawn mower set up. It was pretty easy.  Cut open the box, dropped the back and pulled everything out.  We had to tighten a few parts and add the oil.  Two pulls on the cord and Ron was off and running.  He took a couple of  passes and then handed it off to me.   The machine worked really well.  Jo will love it.  She is after all our official lawn mower.

Ron has been telling everyone that he bought me a lawn mower for Mother’s Day.  But he really got it for Jo.  I bet she cannot wait to try it out.