New toy

I can't honestly say that I wasn't nervous about this. Usually R and I make big purchasing decisions like this together, and slowly, with lots of research and discussion. This time though, R wasn't well enough to get involved, so I just had to set to and do it myself. Luckily I know quite a few people who have tractor mowers, so I took advice from my sister-in-law and several reliable neighbours, then toured all the local mower suppliers, interrogated them moderately fiercely, and decided who I thought I'd be able to trust. Then I cast a few runes, read some tea leaves and chicken entrails, tossed a coin until it came down the way I wanted, and bought this Cub Cadet from the Basford brothers.

Today Ian Basford delivered the machine and spent half an hour teaching me how to use it, made us a decent offer on our old walk-behind mower, then zoomed off to get out of the way of a man with a robot lifter, who'd arrived to pick up my car (literally) off the drive and take it to the garage in Stratford for repair. No, seriously - don't ask. Nor should we probably mention the moment when I came into the house from mowing the wild garden to discover that the breakdown service had tried to deliver my car to the wrong garage, and the language I used before finally establishing that the wrong garage had redirected them to the correct one, and the car was now where it needed to be.

And... breathe.

Anyhoo, the mower is great fun, and R is impressed with the inroads it's already made into the jungle of our garden, so we're all good here. Though if the neighbours think I'm harvesting the wild flower meadow in the front garden any time soon, they're going to be sadly disappointed. No-mow May is continuing here till the last of the ox-eye daisies go over - and then perhaps we'll see about a bit of tidying up.

R: C2, D9.