President's Day

When you live in Washington state, in Lincoln county, you almost have to celebrate presidents day!  I baked a cherry pie yesterday to honor George Washington.  Happy to have my own cherry tree that no one has chosen to chop down!  Last summer we had a huge cherry crop, both pie cherry and sweet.  Sadly, some went to waste as we couldn't eat or process them all.

cherry pie!

Cherry pie and a cream pie made from the left over pie dough.  A family favorite.

I power raked the lawn yesterday, late afternoon.  Finished just as the sun was setting.  This is usually an end of March job.  But, the grass is growing and I wanted to get the thatch out.  If it was later in the season, I would give it a good dose of fertilizer and some water and say, grow, grow grow!  But this early I will hope that the temperature gets cooler and say, slow down, slow down!

This is the power rake.  It has spinning metal fingers that tear up the thatch.

Thatched and un thatched lawn.

I thatch once a year, in the spring.

Quite a bit of thatch comes out.

Once I run the power rake over, the real work begins.  All the clippings need to be raked up by hand.  All these clippings will go on to the flower beds for mulch.

You should be able to see what has been hand raked and what hasn't.

Thatch raked on to one of the flower beds.  Still more to rake.

Thatch raked in to piles that I'll pick up and put on to the flower beds.  I'll be working on this project for a few more days.  I'm not quite as young as I used to be!