May 2008 - Page 3 of 5 - Bumblebee Blog

I don’t usually make a habit of publicizing my laziness or gardening errors.

But sometimes something so serendipitous happens that I just have to share it. Here is a spontaneous garden container.

I neglected to clean out and put away this pot that was the home for a beautiful hibiscus last year. I had nothing else planted in the pot. At all. And this spring, some pansies have self-seeded. Then, hot dog and holy moly! A small sunflower seems to have sprouted from among the dead hibiscus stems. I was so intrigued by the whole thing, I have just let it go to see what happened.

And now, I rather like it.

What about that? I have an automatic garden! What if everything were this easy?

Bzzzz May 15th, 2008

I call my lawn tractor Sitwell.

That’s because he sits around pretty well as opposed to riding around and, uh, mowing. He is an expensive piece of equipment.

Sitwell lives to sit around. In fact, just recently, he was one of the factors in the big lawn mowing fiasco that could only be accomplished by two men and a Sitwell mower. He sat out. They mowed with the John Deere push mower. And not well, I should add.

Please note that the grass has been mowed AROUND Sitwell. The mower needs his own mower.

As it turned out, the problem with Sitwell that time was his mower blade was bent, for some unfathomable reason, after a short drive with my 17-year-old son.

But after paying $398 to get the mower repaired and tuned up, I was dismayed, to say the least, when Sitwell decided to do another sitdown. After driving a mere 11 yards, the whole mowing deck landed flat on the ground bringing the mower to a screeching halt. That comes to about $36.18 per yard of mowing or $12.06 per foot of mowing.

I really can’t afford a Sitwell mower.

And because I was faced with another four hours of push mowing and raking because the push mower doesn’t have a mulching attachment, I was a wee bit put out. Okay, I am facing another business trip and tight deadlines, so I was even more than a “wee bit put out” when I called the mower man to come and cart Sitwell off to the hospital again.

Poor mower man. I reckon that this fellow doesn’t often encounter a woman as tall as I am in full dudgeon about her mower. After I gave myself the old “Robin, get a life” chat, I explained the reason for my pique—Sitwell is a slacker and I am tired of push mowing the lawn. This simply isn’t humorous anymore.

See, as you can see, Sitwell has a history of getting into trouble. He has no stamina at all. I need a mower with a bit more staying power—some umph!

Another Sitwell moment from history