I changed the oil in my lawn mower today!

If you had told me five years ago that I would be changing the oil (including the oil filter) in my lawnmower today I would have said "There's oil in a lawnmower?!? – go figure!"

I bought the oil filter at Canadian Tire – although I'm going to have to watch for end of season sales – I paid more for my lawnmower oil filter than I do for a full on lube-oil-and-filter at Hardcore Autotech! (Unless I pay for the way cooler synthetic oil – which lasts twice as long as doesn't cost twice as much…)

In any case, I drained the oil, took off the old filter put the new one on and then re-filled the oil reservoir. Now – here's another complaint for the nice engineers at John Deere – why is it so freakin' impossible to read the dipstick when you have clean oil?

Oh! And why does it say "be very careful not to overfill"? Oh! And why is it even possible to overfill?

I suspect a John Deere Engineer named Simon is the guy who put that label on the oil tank.

Stupid Simon.

While I was in the oil changing mood I decided to see if my push mower (a little 3.5hp that Sherry uses to mow around the trees and on the dangerously sloped hill) has oil and son-of-a-gun it does! I removed all the old really black oil and added it to the pan full from the John Deere and filled it up with oil too.

Now. What do I do with the liter of old oil? My plan is to put it in an old container, label the container "Used Oil" and then put it on the top shelf for 25 years and sell it with the workshop.

Sounds like a plan to me.

In Other News – the baby Robin that hatched outside our window is Huge now! He's really loud and has been flapping his wings like crazy. I wonder if he knows how far down the deck is…?

ERCA was here! ERCA was here!

They came Tuesday while Sherry was off work (Tuesdays are the new Saturdays for her). And they went to work and planted over 1000 trees. It was pretty cool to watch (although it was a lot more low-tech than I was led to believe).

The Kubota that had the planting platform on it was gorgeous and I had tractor-envy like you wouldn't believe (a year ago even *I* wouldn't have believed it!) and it was attached to a simple platform that had one disk that would open the ground and then seats for two people to sit behind the plow with trees stored in the baskets. They would plunk the little tree into the ground and a pair of wheels would close the dirt in behind them.

Rob drove the tractor and two young ladies sat in the seats to plant the trees – I didn't get their names, but you can see them in the photos.

After they had plowed around for a couple of hours they wrapped up and took their lovely tractor home with them (I asked twice, really nicely for them to just leave it here with the keys in the ignition, but they weren't as nice as they had seemed originally).

We walked through the fields and straightened some of the trees and I had to be careful where I walked – some of the trees really, honestly look like little sticks that someone broke off a branch of a tree and just jammed into the ground. Very little to look at right now. Hard to imagine that little stick will turn into a mighty hardwood tree. (You can see one of the trees in the foreground of the photo to the right – it's leaning a little to the right in the lower right of the photo – there's another one about 1/3 of the way down the photo – squint – that's what I have to do in real life to see them too…)

I guess we'll just need to wait a dozen years or so to see the tree that it should become. It's a good thing that I'm a patient kinda guy!

In other news I'm working with Google to come up with an adwords campaign where I pay for people to click on my ad. (Here's where I'm going to do a little teaching – just for a second – if you're reading this Blog on the internet and you use Google to find it each time – there are two types of listings for my site – paid and free. It would be really nice if you could use the free one instead of me having to pay Google $0.75 each time you click on my ad! Thanks!)

Whohoo!

With my hardwood forest (in 20 years) I know that a stroll to the campground is Bound To Please!

I managed to get the Bunny-Resistant gate installed today. It went in pretty much the way that I expected it to (after I repaired a faulty weld that let go during installation).

The gate swings very nicely and the fencing installed up against the gate frame nicely. Now we're ready for veggies – I guess we should be out planting seeds tomorrow (before the rain).

Oh! Speaking of rain – this wet, soggy Spring season has pushed off our tree installation plans. Rob from ERCA comes here on a daily basis and paces around like an expectant father. He pokes a shovel in the soil and shakes his head. He does this every day.

Today is wonderfully dry and sunny, but it rained last night and they're calling for rain again tomorrow morning. There just isn't enough time between rainfalls to get any planting done. I think he said he had 8 million seedlings in his fridge at home and his wife is getting a little ticked off.

Now I know why he paces.

In other news – I'm still really enjoying cutting the grass – it's a wonderful 'quiet' time (it's actually not very quiet at all, but it is nice and solitary).

Every time I cut the grass I play a demented little game of Simon Says. In this case 'Simon' is played by the engineers that built my John Deere lawn mower.

I should back the story up a little and ask those of you who have driven riding lawnmowers if you remember the first time that you tried to back up while cutting the lawn? Did you press the RIO button before you started? Neither did I.

Man! That was a horrible noise coming from under my seat (and it had nothing to do with what I ate that day!)

So. When I cut my grass and I need to go backwards I press the RIO button simply because the engineers at John Deere say I have to.

The button isn't hard to press, so there's nothing mechanical happening (it's a tiny little button – smaller than the starter button). If I press it ever so briefly when I first start backing up then I can backup for as far as I want without holding the button.

But I have to press it.

Does RIO stand for "Reverse Is OK"?

If I only have to press it for a brief second, why don't I just tape the button down? Why – exactly – is the button there?

I think it's to amuse the engineers at John Deere.

Just because someone there, named Simon, said.