PBW: And That's a Lot

Very nearly a year ago, a Photo Blog Wednesday featured my dad's lot. Now, 364 days later, I present better pictures, taken this past Saturday.

Here's our garage:






My dad already took one trip there without me this year, and while I was with him two weeks ago, we spent most of the time adjusting the springs and cables on the garage door to make it easier to open. It took two of us to lift it, hours of adjusting, and ultimately we realized the old springs from the original door, hanging on the back wall, still had better tension than the newer ones which were completely shot. We returned this past weekend to install the old springs but, before we could tackle the door, we had weeds to combat:






We keep an old lawnmower in the garage, and my dad brought over a second one that my uncle, in the process of moving from a house to an apartment, was getting rid of. Together, we made short work of the lawn although I was kind of disappointed to finish so quickly. There's something zen and relaxing about cutting a mostly rectangular piece of property. I like to go around the edges in a clockwise motion since the mower lacks a bag and blows whatever it cuts out the right side. Thus, I aim the clippings toward the center of the lot rather than into the neighboring yards, and as I continue to spiral in narrower and narrower rectangles toward the middle, I end up mulching as well. At home, the lawn runs around all four sides of our house and there are more hills, trees, bushes, curved gardens edged with seashells, narrow paths and other obstacles that make the process more challenging and annoying and less peaceful.

I don't know how my parents maintained the lot by hand when I was a kid, before we got the garage back from a tenant perpetually late on his rent and started storing a spare lawnmower there. I'll never be the farmers my parents are at heart, but I certainly appreciate the end result of our efforts:




One neighbor didn't like me being there, not at all. He made a lot of racket, but a fence separated us, and he took his frustration out on biting any and all tree branches in front of him. Once the mower made noise he retreated to his porch, but kept a watchful eye on me. He'll be trouble when he's older....



Here's the door with the spring removed, the metal safety cable hanging, awaiting a stronger spring:



Years ago my mom started moving things we were getting rid of from our house to the garage. In the Summer she'd have garage sales on weekends, but five or six years ago she started volunteering at an arboretum on weekends. As cluttered as our house can be, I shudder to think what it would look like if we still had this stuff there:



My dad waited patiently while I took pictures, but sooner or later I had to put the camera away and do some real work.



The spring transplant was successful, perhaps overly so. While the original problem was lifting the door, the new problem was keeping it down. We fine tuned the hooks and cables and found a setting where the door would close, and after opening it about half way the tension would take over and do the rest of the work. One of the springs still has too much slack when the door is open and hangs a bit more than we'd like, but it was a marked improvement from the condition it had been in. As we were leaving, I noticed some friendly faces in the driveway of the warehouse next door. Taking my camera from under the seat, I walked over and took two last pictures before calling it a day.