I hate December!

I was going to say “I hate Christmas!” but that’s not completely true. It’s not so much that I hate Christmas, it’s that I hate the lead up to Christmas, especially this year. December in Australia is the first month of summer, and summer means bushfires and snakes [we’ve seen two already].

In normal years I would have spent most of spring mowing a little bit every day. We’re on 1.6 hectares, and that equates to a lot of grass. The alpacas do their best, but in spring they can’t eat the new grass fast enough, and once the grass sets seed they won’t touch it.

So that’s in a normal year – a little bit of mowing spread out over a couple of months. This year has been different though. Australia is experiencing its third La Nina event in a row which has meant rain, rain and more rain. All that rain has triggered unprecedented floods all along the eastern seaboard with lives lost, crops lost and whole towns inundated.

We don’t have to worry about floods here in Warrandyte as we’re on a ridge, but all that rain means the grass grows an inch over night. And it’s too wet to mow during the day, especially with a small, cordless lawnmower.

In desperation, I paid for a guy to come in and whipper snipper¹ the worst of it, but that’s left sheaths of grass drying on the ground. Exhibit A:

What’s worse, the new grass is already growing through. It has to be mowed. 😦

And now we get to the other reason I hate December so much: things break down. This year, my faithful Ozito cordless lawnmover has struggled even with the lower grass, hardly surprising given that I bought it in 2016 and have used it in ways it was never designed to be used. So I had to go out and buy a new cordless mower.

I tried the new model Ozito, but it died after just one mowing session. Note to Ozito: I am so disappointed.

Thank gods Bunnings let me swap the new Ozito for a Ryobi cordless. The Ryobi is a great little mower but it’s battery takes ages to re-charge and the catcher is a stupid design so the outlet from the blade constantly clogs up. But at least it does cut like a champion. Exhibit B, a pic taken looking back up at the house:

But December hasn’t finished with me yet.

We had a couple of days of ‘hot’ weather recently so we filled up the firefighting pumps with petrol and tested them. One started without a hitch. The other tried to start but just wouldn’t catch. Grrrrr….

I do have a fabulous mechanic who fixed the last problem with the pumps, but he’s flat out until….you guessed it, Christmas.

I’m not too worried as I don’t think we’ll have any major fires until maybe mid-January, and one of the pumps does work, but still…I did not need this, not the worry and certainly not the hit to my budget. If the Reserve Bank is reading this post <<hysterical laughter>> I didn’t intend to contribute to inflation this year!

Anyway, it looks as if it might rain again soon so I’d better get out there. Who needs a gym when you’ve got grass? -grump-

Meeks

Whipper snipper¹ : I think it’s called a ‘brush cutter’ elsewhere in the world.