New Mower

Happy Independence day!

I say this even as we Americans lose more and more of our independence. But I still love my country even if I do not particularly like or trust my government.

For the 4th of July we are taking the day off. It is Tuesday and normally this time of year that means we do an afternoon farmers' market in Oxford. But since we are having a national holiday we have opted to miss the market. The major threat of thunderstorms all afternoon down in oxford has also helped us to make the decision to no go to market today. Instead we will go to a 4th of July party just north of Oxford, weather permitting.

it's been a hot miserable 4th of July weekend. We spend Saturday at the farmers' market which was surprisingly good for us than afterwards we went to our friends the McKinstry's for lunch and some hanging out time since we do not see these guys nearly enough (I have been friends with them for over 20 years). We had so much fun that we did not get back home until around 5pm saturday.

Sunday we went to Yellow Springs, OH and hung out with Eugene's family and ate red meat and sweated. I think it got up to 95˚F-yuck. But it was nice to see everyone. While we were there I found the classified ads and looked at the mower possibilities (about a week ago I wrote about our mower dying and we did take the part to a mower fix-it guy and he called last week and said it would cost $315 to fix the part or we could pay $340 for a new part or we could find a working mower). I showed the mower ads to Eugene who called a guy near Miamisburg who had a John Deer for $675 and set up an appointment to go look at the thing for monday.

Monday came and we did some light farm work picking green beans, French filet beans, strawberries and sugar snap peas in the morning before the heat and humidity became unbearable. Came in and took showers (this is something we rarely do-take a cool shower mid day but we were hot and sweaty and it felt soooo good) and than ran some errands in New Paris and Richmond such as finally closing out our old checking account. Than we came back home and made arrangements to go look at the mower in Miamisburg and at 4pm got in the van and drove to look at the thing and by 6pm we were the new owners of a 1993 JD riding mower. Now we will no longer have to worry about our grass getting too long and our neighbors will know we have high moral standards because our lawn will look good.

Funny that, we Americans gauge the morality of our neighbors based on how their lawns look not really on their actions. I mean a person could be brutal to his wife and kids but if his lawn is manicured no one will suspect anything for a long time. But if that lawn is unkempt (I am not talking about the classic Redneck yard complete with cars up on blocks and a burned out trailer) than the person is suspected of being a very immoral person, possibly a drug dealer or at the very least a drunk when in fact they could just be too poor to afford a mower and gas or (as in our case) the mower broke and we took our time dealing with all our options. And I am glad we did weigh all our options and found a good quality mower for not a great deal of money.

Have a happy 4th my fellow 'Murkins