It seems to me that early Spring is a great time to buy a house, because your first half of the year that you own it you get to learn about most of the animals that live around it. It certainly seems that I’ve been writing about animals a lot here, anyway.

Today, I was mowing the lawn, and I saw quite a few small frogs in it. At first, I thought I was just kicking up grass and such, but it seemed to be leaping in an odd direction based on how I was mowing. Finally, I saw a frog make a mad dash under my deck, and figured out what was going on. Well, not really, just that it was frogs.

I hope that I did not kill too many of them while I was mowing. They were only an inch or an inch and a half long each, and blended in with the grass. Most were heading from the direction of the road and in the direction of the brook. When I noticed movement in time I tried to slow down and give them an opportunity to go on their merry way, but other than once or twice I do not know if that did any good.

I enjoy mowing my lawn. I liked mowing the lawn when I was a kid, too. For some reason it relaxes me. Today I especially enjoyed the lawn mowing. I am a marathoner, and so I run a lot of miles. My training currently has me running twice a day most days. I have had some minor aches and pains that needed attention so I took the day off from running. Mowing the lawn was the only workout for the day.
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One thing that took us over a month to get was a lawn mower. When we moved in there was still snow on the ground, but it did not take very long for the grass to grow enough to be unmanageable. We wound up buying a craftsman lawn mower from Sears. It was nowhere near a top of the line model, but it works well enough. The first 3 or 4 times I used it it was very difficult to get started, but now it works like a charm. Our half acre takes about 45 minutes to an hour to mow.

The biggest problem that I have mowing our lawn is that there are some steep points that lead down to the water where it is not really safe to mow, and off one side of our driveway there is too much poison ivy for me to venture into yet. I really need to get an edge trimmer, but I have not bought one yet because I might be getting a hand me down from my fiancé’s grandparents.

Choosing the lawn mower did not take very long. I waited until the lawn mowers were on sale at a few different stores, and then went out and chatted with the salesman at Sears and chose one of the models that they had on display. With proper care, this lawn mower should hopefully last long enough for us to acquire a larger lawn where a bigger mower might be desired. That will hopefully not be for 10 or 15 years.