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Sunday, March 2, 2008

Heat and Snow

Yesterday, it got up to 74 degrees here. We spent a lot of the day doing yard work. There's a lot of cleanup that needs to be done each spring, trimming back all the dead stems and getting the remaining fall leaves out of the flower beds. I got out the leaf vacuum and sucked up a whole mess of leaves while The Mrs. trimmed the plants, but we filled up all the garbage before even doing 20% of the yard.

Our HOA has very picky rules about composts, so I haven't been allowed to replicate the grand composter I built at the previous house. I'll eventually do something, but for now, I am required to either throw my yard waste out with the trash or pay (pay!) a local dirt place to take them, turn them into compost, and then sell them to other people. I choose to landfill most of the yard waste in order to do my part for global warming.

My one exception is garden waste. I turn that back into the garden. I got out my piece of crap chipper/shredder and went to work on the garden. You have to feed the yard waste in very, very slowly or it jams. I jammed it 6 times in the hour and a half I used it before it got dark. Got through about 1/4 of the garden. Dried corn stalks were the most fun. The tomato plants were the least.

When I was at Sears, they had a gas-powered one on sale for about $700. I keep looking for one on Craigslist, but I never see a good deal. They're also pretty big, so I don't know where I'd keep it.

Today, it snowed.

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