Making hay

In the spirit of making hay while the sun shines, I spent some time last week raking up grass clippings with Bubby.

Now, before you ask, yes, we have a mulching blade on our lawn mower.  The grass is just being really ... prolific ... at this point in the summer, and our lawn boy is having trouble keeping up with it.  In addition, I can use the grass clippings in my garden to suppress weeds and in my compost bin to make nutrient-filled new soil.  Otherwise, I would not be raking grass, even if leaving it will kill the grass underneath.  Less grass = less grass to cut.

Three take-aways from this experience:

1. It is easier to rake grass with a leaf rake versus a garden rake.  I was actually kind of happy when Bubby decided he needed yet another break, which happened with increasing frequency throughout the task, because that meant I got to use the leaf rake for a few minutes.

2.  It would be even easier if our mower had a collector on it.

3.  Three acres is a lot of grass to rake.

In this part of the yard, we raked the grass into long fat "snakes"
Later on, the lawn boy drove the tractor along-side
to make it easy for us to load the grass into the trailer.