What I Did on My Summer Vacation

I'm an English teacher.  More specifically, I teach writing - "composition" as those of us in the know call it.  Sometimes, I can't help but sympathize with the teacher on the classic movie A Christmas Story.  In Ralphie's dream scenario, she assigns A THEME (and states it so dramatically that it warrants the use of all caps in this case).  Ralphie sees her as she - in the midst of Ralphie's reverie - agonizes over the poor writing she has received.  She marks each theme with an F until she comes to Ralphie's.  She reads his in complete rapture, nearly singing every word.  After reading, she leaps from her desk chair and fills the chalk boards with "A +++++++++."  I understand how she feels. 

Anyway, I was thinking today of the timeless classic THEME of What I Did on My Summer Vacation.  How many of those have you written in your lifetime?  And, if you didn't write it, you were probably compelled to somehow share with your classmates on the first day of school what you had done the previous three months.  There was inevitably the classmate who did something so magnificent, so earth-shattering that your stories of going to the community pool paled horribly in comparison.  You so desperately wanted to be the cool kid who traveled or got to meet someone famous.  But, that never happened.  So, in that vein, I'm going to share what I did on my summer vacation.

I did lots and lots of weedeating.  Seriously.  And I don't mean the simple, trim-around-the-edges-of-your-freshly-mown-lawn kind of weedeating; I mean practically blazing new trails in a jungle kind of weedeating.  Here's the deal - to help pay for Obe's board (and to aggressively tackle the debt we have), I took on the weedeating at the farm for the summer.  On a horse farm that is nearly 30 acres - and is fenced and cross-fenced for pastures - and is situated on a steep hillside where a mower or bush hog can't go - that means A LOT of weedeating.  So much weedeating, in fact, that there's no way I could ever be "caught up."  Add to that the fact that we had ample rain this summer, and you've got me practically running around the farm with the weedeater trying to stay on top of it all. 

Allow me to use some visuals to help you see what I'm talking about.  First, the tools of the trade:

On the left is the trusty weedeater.  Beside it is the ear protection/mesh face mask that I wear - gasoline and Cyndi, the loppers (get it?).  The only missing tool is the small spool of weedeating string, but I had just used the last of it for this morning's jaunt. 

Now, prepare yourself for this next picture.  Seriously, small children should probably be removed from the room, because this picture is the stuff of nightmares.  I have successfully startled nearly every horse on the property in my get up.  I'm sure I look like a horseflesh-eating creature in their prey minds; some will bolt to the far side of their pastures while I work on one fenceline.  As I make my way around the pasture, they will strategically graze around the fence farthest from me.  Anyway...this is me, believe it or not:

Ear protection/mesh face mask, baseball cap, dust mask, bandana around neck, long-sleeved shirt, long pants and boots.  Every single time I did the weedeating this summer, this is what I wore.  This morning, with temps in the mid-60s, it wasn't so bad.  However, on a few of those 90-degree afternoons, it got a little brutal.  Okay, a lot brutal.  Note the flecks of eaten weeds stuck in the face protection.  At the end of a day weedeating, I would be completely covered in these flecks.  I'm not exaggerating at all to say that I had grass all over my body at one point or another while weedeating - all I can say to that is, "eeewww."  Seriously.

So, this morning, I decided to work a bit on Adora's pasture.  Adora, the special mare that she is, has her own little pasture that is basically a long, narrow run that opens up into a large square of a field.  Her pasture borders Obe's, and they've become quite good buddies.  They even travel well together, and Adora is kind of particular about who travels in "her" trailer.  The long, narrow run part of Adora's pasture was a little crazy with weeds...and I mean WEEDS.  Huge weeds...as thick as my arm and as tall as I am.  Here are a couple of before pictures.

 That's Adora on the right, looking typically aghast that I would come into her pasture at all, let alone in the get up that I showed you above.  The two greys on the other side of the short, electric fence are Spirit and Jasmine, two of the best school ponies in the world.  Anyway, that's one section of fenceline that I attacked today. 

This is Adora's little run - I like to call it her catwalk, because she's kind of a diva.  You can't even see the fenceline on the left.  It has been completely swallowed up by weeds.  It is definitely time to fight back the jungle. 

So, over the course of two and a half hours, I hacked away with Cyndi the Loppers and my trusty weedeater.  I would do one section of fence at a time (from fencepost to fencepost), digging through the weeds and lopping off the large weeds that would spell death to my weedeater string, then cranking up the weedeater and mowing down all the rest.  So...the after shots...

 This is where Adora was standing in the before shot.

And this is her catwalk.  Notice that you can actually see the fencelines!  Yay!  Clear fencelines are one of my favorite things.

There you have it - what I did on my summer vacation.  Yes, school has started and I'm still weedeating, but that's because the weeds are still growing!  They don't know that summer is over.  But, I must admit that it sure feels good to look down that fenceline and see it all clear and pretty - hard work is just that, hard, but it's also very rewarding. I'd give myself an "A++++++++++."