False Starts and Overseeding.

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The rain was coming in yesterday, so we switched our schedule to working outside in the morning and doing school in the afternoon.

We were going to dig out this French drain above the pool, but decided to wait until we get some rigid pipe. That will be necessary where the pipe extends into the lawn where we'll have to mow over it.





Instead we decided to overseed some grass into the horse pasture. Last year, with all the change in weather back to a more typical amount of rainfull for this area, our native grasses came back full force. It was thick and lush all summer long. We rejoiced at the carpet of bounty.

It looked like this in the horse pasture all spring and summer,





But by October 21, it had already gone into hibernation.





What we thought was going to be ample feed for the horses all winter turned out to be a greater loss than ever.

So I bought a huge bag of Kentucky 31 grass seed for the horse pasture, hoping to grow feed for the horses. We walked out and realized that there was no way seed would take on that ground, even with rain coming, without somehow scratching it up.

Michael came up with a great idea and began working on it.





He always looks forward to riding his bike around the place, from chore to chore, when the weather warms up.





I captured some shots of late winter flowers in the lawn.









And here is the nearly finished product. A small, simple, home made harrow.





Nails every inch, protruding about 1/2 inch out. And eye hooks for rope attachments.





Running rope through.





Yawn...





Ready to go!





We took off and, though the first few feet worked perfectly...





We soon discovered weaknesses in our plan. In our test area, it tended to rake debris and lift the nails too high, so that no scratching of the surface took place. Also, the rocks bent the little nails.





We decided to finish the testing down in the actual place we'd be using it. It worked better here, but the nails were obviously going to fail very rapidly.





It had already begun to rain and we'd gotten nothing done outside, for all our work and delaying of school.

We decided to at least get some grass in somewhere, until we could decide if we were going to build a harrow that would be much stronger and better suited for the job. So Michael mowed the lawn around the house very closely





while I began spreading seed in the hope of having a thicker, healthier lawn this year.





I've never been enamored with this spreader and, as usual, gave up on it and began spreading seed by hand. In the wind. In the rain. I love a challenge! We got half the lawn done before the rain was so bad we were dripping and seed was sticking to us all over.

This week has been exceptionally busy and we are losing two days at a Hunter Safety course, so we were really hoping to accomplish more by this time.

We did school and took off for Michael's men's group. We ladies stayed at another place and watched The Last Sin Eater, knitted, snacked and chatted. I really needed caffeine as I resembled more of a lump on the sofa than a perky conversationalist. Fell in bed last night after midnight again.

Zzzzzzzzzzzz...

~Faith

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