COLD AND WET AND A NEW STORE TO EXPLORE

 Saturday was rainy.  Not heavy but just gloomy and cold and generally miserable.  Wet cold is always the worst.  The original plan was to use the Zen Machine (mower) over the last few weekends to clear some new areas before they pick it up to have its annual maintenance.  Well, it's rained every weekend for the last month, juuuuust enough to make mowing difficult. 

So we made the decision for me to head to the farm by myself Sunday when the skies were a little more clear and get the mower outside and ready to be picked up.

This shows how wet the grass was (dormant as it may be).  These are the impressions that it made as I drove it from the shed to the spot where I left it.

I parked it and covered it up with a plastic tarp and some rocks to weigh it down and keep it from blowing off.  There is no rain in the forecast so it should be fine but this will keep the bird poop off of it too, ha.  They are scheduled to pick it up Wednesday morning.

Here's a good example of how cold it is inside the house without heat.  At about 10am, it was 41 inside.  It's pretty cold.  Or course, if everything goes according to plan, this will be the last Winter to worry about it.

Since I didn't have much I could do out there between the wet and the cold, I went to a new (well, new to us) hardware store in a nearby town.  I figured it would be nice to explore a new place so we don't have to rely on the bigger box stores in Houston.  

This was a great store with all sorts of good stuff.  Every kind of tool you might need, cleaning supplies, lumber, gardening supplies, fencing, paint, etc.  The only thing they were lacking was a garden center but thankfully, Houston has SO many wonderful small and large places to find our plants.

One thing they had that I was pleasantly surprised to see was a large canning section.  I took this quick picture, lots of jars of different sizes and plenty of lids and rings and other processing supplies.

That was nice to see and learn of another place to get them when we need them.  Overall, it was a great store and an easy drive from the farm.  We won't have to fight the crowds in Houston all the time.

So here sits the Zen Machine waiting for its closeup.  Blades sharpened, filters changed, belts checked, greased and tightened, etc, and they even told me they'd clean and detail it.

We'll probably get it back just in time for the Spring rainy season, LOL.