March 3, 2005

Today I tilled...

Today I tilled the freakin front half of the world! I'm serious, just look outside and it's quite likely that you'll see tilled earth. Yup, that was me. And with a small rented tiller no less!

We decided to tear up the not-so-nice landscaping in front of the house and make something nice out of it. We dug up a mess of ferns and dirt and put them in the trash can. Side note, do you know exactly how heavy dirt is? I don't mean a little dirt, but a lot of dirt. Like, each shovel full, large shovel full, must weigh about 8 pounds. I put many of those shovels full in our garbage can. Fortunately we have automated trash pickup where a nifty large truck with a robot arm comes by, snatches our trash can from the curb, lifts in it high in the air and dumps it into its waiting maw. That's cool because we can put up to 335 pounds in our large trash can and not worry about having our trash men get workers comp for their back injuries. It's great. I love it. Anyway, mega heavy trash can. Hopefully mr roboto-garbagetruck-o will be able to pick it up.

The tilling was annoying at first and then kind of fun. We rented a tiller from the local mega home improvement store instead of buying one. The cheapest one we found was an $150 electric that was a bit too rich for me. So, we rented one for 30 bucks. The guy at Tool Rental started it and showed me how to use it. No Prob! So we got it home and tilled for five minutes then it died. I tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried to start that damn thing! I even went and bought gas because I thought it might just be out. Finally after 1.5 hours of trying, I returned it to the mega store and got a replacement. Diagnosis: Tool rental guy told me backwards which side was choke and which was run on the switch. I tried all those times to start it on choke and flooded it hopelessly. The replacement started easily and we worked for about 3 hours straight with it. After the jackhammer-esque vibrations, my hands hurt, my back hurts, and everything else does too. We got the place torn up though. Now it is supposed to rain on my freshly turned earth. Drat!

Female Roomie (at Jen's encouragement) started hacking away at the big Sago Palm in the front of the house. :( It's been nice knowing you esspee.

We planted some red corn behind the house in a tilled spot, and I can't wait to see if it comes up. Our own fresh corn. What a treat!

Afterwards, I got a message from an old friend of mine saying that he's started a blog in not so many words. His message:

Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 17:29:05 -0600
From:"His Holiness"
To:darrellh
Subject:Re: Top O' the Mornin' to Ya

I shouldn't have done this. I haven't the time.
http://wretchedones.blogspot.com/

That's going to become one of my permanent links as soon as I get around to it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Imagine two boards crossed, stuck in our front lawn, with the following writing:
Here lies no more my husband's beloved butt-ugly Espee. Too bad you just had to grow into our driveway. We tried neat trims and even a pedicure but you spurned us by becoming even butt-uglier, if that is possible.

Followed by a toddler's crayon scribbles and interpreted by more writing: Seeeeeee Yoooouuuuuu!

Sorry, hun, but they just don't make Butt-icure cremes for plants. :(