Lawn work - Michelle and I were discussing lawn cleanup and maintenance earlier this week. In particular we were talking about doing some raking or de-thatching of all the old dead grass leftover from the late fall and winter. We decided to pick up a couple of attachments for the tractor: a lawn de-thatcher and a lawn sweeper. Tuesday night I ordered them from Sears and picked them up from their warehouse at Wednesday's lunch. A de-thatcher has limited use but the sweeper should come in handy again in the fall to help clean up the leaves and pine needles.
Like a lot of Craftsman tractor accessories these fell into the "some assembly required" realm taking a few hours each. I did the de-thatcher Friday night and the sweeper this afternoon sitting out on the driveway while keeping an eye on the boys. Actually my face feels a bit flush tonight from being outside all afternoon. It was a gorgeous, sunny but mild day. Friday night Abby's friend, Jessica, slept over. This afternoon Abby spent a few hours with her hiking to Purgatory Falls. Meanwhile Claire's friends, Alexandra and Brianna, came over this afternoon and are spending the night with our girls. We ordered pizza for dinner and I took the four girls to Blakes afterwards for ice cream.
Tomorrow afternoon I'll use both tractor attachments on the lawn -- weather permitting. I can only hope that when family visits next weekend, the weather is just as nice as it was today.
Piano - I saw the niftiest combination of retro, hackishness, and web geekery late last week. There's a guy with a love for old player pianos (retro). He assembled the hardware and software pieces together to scan the old paper rolls that were used on those pianos and convert them into MIDI files playable on a modern digital piano or synthesizer (hackish). The files (2650 to date) are posted at his website for free download and enjoyment (web geekery). I've downloaded a couple but have yet to play them on our digital piano. Ahhh, preserving early 20th century works by porting them to modern equipment! I even found a player piano favorite of Grandpa Bilik, Jolly Coppersmith. Listen here.
The lawn work went well. De-thatching took a long time because you need to drive the tractor slowly. Otherwise the de-thatching attachment skips and jumps a bit. I'd estimate it took about three hours. Once done the lawn did NOT look pretty. Dead grass lay everywhere. Michelle was pretty concerned, thinking "what have we done!"
She helped me switch the tractor tow to the lawn sweeper and I did a couple of preliminary laps. It *really* worked! The mechanism of the sweeper is geared like a bicycle such that one revolution of the wheels it rides on generates over 8 turns of the sweeper bristles. It swept up the thatch and all the debris left over from the winter: twigs, branches, rocks, etc. It also has a nice release pivot so you just pull up to where you want to pile the debris, pull a rope, and the bag empties. You don't have to leave the seat of the tractor -- just pull the tractor forward a bit, slowly release the rope to put the bag back down, and continue sweeping. I swept the whole lawn in about an hour.
One other "honey do" of the weekend had to do with some old electronics. The local Milford scouts had a fundraising drive where they accepted old electronics to be recycled for a donation. For certain heavy items (computers, monitors, ...) they had flat fees, but most everything was 50 cents a pound. Michelle saw this as an excellent time to get rid of an old laptop (Pentium 133), an old electric typewriter from when I was in college, an old receiver and speakers from when we first married, an old phone, an old VCR, an old modem. All this stuff was collecting dust and wouldn't fetch anything significant if auctioned or garage saled. So off it went to the scouts' recycling drive. A little less clutter.
Posted by: Scott at April 11, 2005 09:57 PM