Rain pain
I try to be as efficient as possible with my shop work schedule, but a rainy day can wash my schedule down the gutter. Even though most of my work…
I try to be as efficient as possible with my shop work schedule, but a rainy day can wash my schedule down the gutter.
Even though most of my work is done indoors in the woodshop, the weather plays a much larger role than I like. As a result, I regularly check my weather apps to know whether I should be in the shop or taking care of other things.
This time of year in the Mid-Ohio Valley has some really odd weather patterns, and correspondingly odd agricultural issues. From mid-April till the end of May, our grass explodes. Sure, that happens everywhere, but “explode” isn’t an exaggeration for our neighborhood. Right now I need to mow every three to five days at the most, depending on the rain/sun patterns. I’m not fanatic about lawn mowing, as my sociopathic wacko neighbor handles that department. I just want to mow when it’s needed and get back to work.
But the thing of it is, is that I sometimes have to mow, losing several work hours in the process, when it’s not quite needed. For example, my lawn doesn’t really need mowing today. I mowed three days ago, and while it’s growing fast I shouldn’t really need to mow for two more days – Friday. And while today’s gorgeous, we’re supposed to get rain the next two days. Meaning that the next available mowing day will be Saturday. The grass will be so high by then I’ll have trouble getting the mower through it. That’s irrelevant, though, since I won’t be home Saturday or Sunday, meaning that Monday is the soonest I can mow. At that point, I’d need a tractor.
So here I am on Wednesday, getting ready to go outside and mow a lawn I don’t want to mow instead of going back to the shop where I have a lot of work waiting for me. Further, I was planning on doing a materials run soon, but since I have to leave the back of my car open when transporting lumber I can’t do it in the rain. That means that as soon as I finish the lawn, I have to do it today.
Fortunately, the end of May is approaching, and once we’re about halfway through June the weather will be Saharan once again and I’ll only have to worry about mowing every other week or so.
A.J.
A.J. Hamler is the former editor of Woodshop News and Woodcraft Magazine. He's currently a freelance woodworking writer/editor, which is another way of stating self-employed. When he's not writing or in the shop, he enjoys science fiction, gourmet cooking and Civil War reenacting, but not at the same time.
