R was busy this morning, slapping wood stain on the garage, and I decided – with deep reluctance – that instead of going out and enjoying myself I was morally obliged to share the pain of domesticity. After the weird weather we’ve had all summer, the garden looks so terrible that it was hard to know where to start, but for the first time in months the grass was looking quite long, so I got out the ride-on mower. And then the battery charger, because after sitting unused all summer, the flipping thing was reluctant to start.
I knew how it felt, but while waiting for the battery to charge I stiffened my sinews and attacked the thing I knew would make me feel both heroic and martyred, which was edging the front lawn and then mowing it with the small push mower. By then the ride-on was good to go, so I was able to quickly tackle both the top lawn and the wild garden – the latter quite carefully though, because it’s acquired some cracks over the summer that are so deep the Boy Wonder and I both suspect they might go all the way the the earth’s core, and I didn’t want to be setting off any volcanic eruptions.
By the time I’d put the mower away I was glowing with virtue, so it seemed a bit unjust that when I got out the R7 to go bug-bothering, I found that the flash unit had got itself into an unusable state. By which I really mean, of course, that on its last use I’d pressed a button I shouldn’t have, and now couldn’t work out how to take it off the strobe setting I’d accidentally programmed in. Much random button pressing and a small hissy fit ensued, before I accepted defeat and went and fetched the instruction book. By this time the light was fading fast in the wild garden and there wasn’t much around, but I was able to tap a few shieldbugs out of trees and then put them back in more easily photographable positions. I thought this Parent Bug worked quite well on a fallen red maple leaf.
