Easing the spring

2nd of February AM: I went down the yard to fetch some sticks for the fire and thought that the grass in the yard looked and felt remarkably dry. Accordingly <carpe diem>, when I had filled the log- and kindling baskets against tea-time and a boiling kettle, I dragged the wee lawn-mower out of its shed and gave the grass a short-back-and-sides. It still being winter, and Ireland, you cannot count on grass-dry days at all at all, let alone when the grass is just the right length.We do what we can, when we have time. It is a blessing to be retired and/or working from home because then the moment ~45 minutes~ can be seized. The moment I seized to mow, someone else, 40 km distant, was teaching Human Physiology to 1st Year Pharm Techs instead of me. I guess I'm over Covid, if I can yomp about pushing a mower over the bumpy ground and not collapse wheezing. Sure pissed off Dau.II, though, because mowing is her job when she's here and she's copped a not'Rona flu-thing during a visit to Dublin [Ye Citie of Pox] and was hors de combat [she's all over la Francophonie so French phrases are allowed}.

One week earlier on a similar, sunny day, I'd touched up my chain-saw with the intention of cutting-to-length the two piles of logs I'd stacked under cover last June and July picture:

Cutting blocks with a chain-saw is hard work; I R old; so I said I'd only work through a tankful of gas; then split the bigger rounds and stack the whole lot in a wood-shed convenient to the house. And it was so. The Western pile is now reduced by maybe 2/3rds:

Not all of that reduction was the work of a noisy, dangerous and polluting machine. I've resolved that, anything smaller than my wrist will be cut with my trusty bushman bow-saw. This adds considerably to my mouse-driven upper-body asymmetry but is much better for the planet and my ears. They say that hand-processed wood warms you twice: once in the chopping and then in the hearth.

A week after I mow mow mowed the grass at the home place we were down on Costa na Déise on other business and found one hour of dryness to cut the grass down there, too. We'd missed a last cut in October 2022 for reasons, so things were looking 'tufty'. Now they are looking, still ragged-arsed, but less like Shere Khan might be hiding in  there; which is a great relief to the Things To Do TTD list which rattles about in my 'mind'.

WTF with Easing the Spring? Naming of Parts.