Saturday

So what is the worst that can happen? 

If I use my riding mower to try to cut down the weeds in the front of the property.

Why am I asking this? Because I don't really have $600 to pay someone else to do it and in the past when I did pay someone to come out, they did a terrible job of it and exacted premium prices for it. 

My riding mower is $150 plus the parts I have put on it.  I was reading about it.  The blades can get ruined.  Fine, the blades are already done for.  The housing can get damaged. Fine, it can be fixed.  Anything else? It's got a strong and larger than average engine on it that has lots of power.  

I'm going to try it at least.  If it doesn't work, I'll find that out pretty quickly. Set the speed on the lowest setting and the engine speed on highest and see what happens.  If it takes forever but it does the job - I"m fine with that.  If it doesn't do the job, I have lost nothing.  I think, lol.

The only other cheap method is getting a scythe and doing it by hand.  I don't really think I would last very long trying to do that, that's a lot of work for there are a lot of weeds. I'm tired of looking at the damned weeds, they are a huge eyesore, I have to at least try whatever I can.  

The driveway is also a source of frustration but so far, I have found nothing that I can do to fix it. Not without spending a lot of money anyway.  There is no hand solution to that, it has to be a blade on a machine, I see no other way of fixing it.  

That's where I've been at today, looking up things on youtube, google, etc trying to find some way to rectify these problems without spending a fortune I don't have on it.  

Well, anyway, in a couple of hours we are headed downtown for the first-ever, in-town fireworks display. Or at least, the first I've ever heard about here and everyone else for that matter has said the same thing. Fireworks are not allowed in city limits.  Everyone does fireworks shows outside the city.

It came to my attention today that the owner of the local company pretty much knows everyone, he must have pulled some levers to get it done.  The only drawback to tonight is it's cold and will be down in the mid 40's by the time we get there. The plus side is I was looking up at the roof of the place yesterday and saw one of those tall propane outdoor heaters up there. For the price, yes, we should get at least one of those, lol.

Oh, there is also this thing called "controlled burn" for the weeds.  It is actually a possibility since there isn't really anything that could go up in flames beyond weeds - and 3 telephone poles?  They're stone dead weeds At worst it would hit live trees - small ones - in it's path and doom them. I'm quite fine with that.  I just don't necessarily think it's dense enough to keep a fire going through them.  You think this a bad idea? No, I don't.  I've seen them doing these burns around here.  

Even the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department have instructions on how to do it. Mostly, disc-ed fire stops. Yup. a driveway on one side, a street on the other, the end of the weeds on another and an empty field on the other.  

This is actually by far the best idea I have seen yet.  A little gas on a small area to get it started and then see if it takes off or just peters out.  I might actually try that on New Year's Day. I have 3 days off including today.  I delivered yesterday at Gurdon, fairly painless process tho it was freezing cold with a bone chilling wind factor going.  I got in and out of the truck as little as possible, staying in the truck, running with the heater on.  

They don't care, we run the trucks there all the time.  They want you to be competent in what you're doing and so, as far as identifying problems, I think I have sufficiently done that by now.  The head dude is amenable and easy to get along with.  He might come out and check on any given trip up there, that's his prerogative.  He can check all he wants and frankly, if he sees something wrong, I want to know about it.  So far, they have liked my work and those are the people you really have to make happy. If they are happy, my management will be happy.